Feb 26 2008
Rearden Commerce, creator of the first on-demand personal assistant and the first on-demand platform for services, today unveiled the new green-focused Rearden Personal Assistant to provide business travelers and organizations a first-of-its kind Total Green Travel Experience when booking travel and related services.
With its new eco-friendly features and functionality including an intelligent Carbon Calculator, hybrid car services, and Web and audio conferencing, the Rearden Personal Assistant becomes the industry's first and only environmentally responsible personal assistant that helps employees save time and make wise travel choices. The Rearden Personal Assistant is also the only corporate booking tool that saves companies money on green travel alternatives by enabling users to take advantage of negotiated discounts on both conferencing and hybrid car services.
The latest Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE)-KDS survey of business travelers and travel managers around the globe, conducted from November 2007 through January 2008, shows an increasingly eco-friendly stance in travel procurement behavior. According to the survey, 36 percent of respondents said they reduced company travel as a measure for supporting sustainability, up from 23 percent a year earlier.
Additionally, nearly half of the respondents indicated that a sense of "guilt" about their travel choices influenced individuals' travel purchase decisions. ACTE-KDS says adjusting travel patterns and behavior is closely linked to the availability of environmentally friendly alternatives. The Rearden Personal Assistant is the first to conveniently recommend intelligent green alternatives to today's business traveler.
"The Rearden Personal Assistant has always saved people time and their companies, money. Now, it's doing its part to save the environment by minimizing the impact of business travel," said Patrick Grady, Founder and CEO, Rearden Commerce. "'Visual guilt' has already proven transformative in helping users make financially responsible decisions for their companies and now we have the opportunity to guide over a million business travelers toward environmentally responsible choices for their planet."
The Rearden Personal Assistant's New Carbon Calculator
The Rearden Personal Assistant helps travelers better assess the environmental impact of air transportation via an Intelligent Carbon Calculator that highlights data-driven benefits of more eco-friendly travel choices, such as opting for conferencing rather than air travel.
The Carbon Calculator shows users at the point of purchase a "Did You Know" factoid on the amount of emissions produced by a flight they're booking. On that same booking location, the Rearden Personal Assistant offers users the convenient and eco-friendly option of booking a web or audio conference instead. Users simply click on the link provided and are instantly taken to the Conferencing page, where the Rearden Personal Assistant helps them schedule a conference. Depending on the number of conferencing participants and their locations, the Carbon Calculator automatically highlights the number of pounds of carbon dioxide that have been saved from entering the atmosphere.
Because Rearden Commerce offers all these options in a unique one-stop shop for business services, users can make intelligent and convenient trade-offs that balance business, financial and environmental responsibilities. The Rearden Personal Assistant helps users quickly book and manage their web and audio conferences without having to remember access codes, can issue invitations to conference attendees directly from users' address books, and have reservation details automatically inserted into their calendars. The Rearden Personal Assistant supports all leading conferencing providers and offers special negotiated discounts through preferred providers WebEx and PremiereGlobal.
The Rearden Personal Assistant's New Hybrid Car Service
As part of its Total Green Travel Experience, the Rearden Personal Assistant will guide users to an expanded ecosystem of car service providers across the United States offering gasoline-saving hybrid vehicles. Rearden Commerce's new car service partners include A First Choice Limo (Atlanta), Arrow Transportation (New York City), Executive Charge (New York City) and PlanetTran (Boston and San Francisco). Rearden Commerce customers benefit from pre-negotiated discounts with these providers.
"We're tremendously excited about the interest we're seeing in our hybrid-only fleet from our customers on both the East and West Coasts," commented Seth Riney, Founder and President of PlanetTran. "Our hybrid vehicle offering is a perfect complement to the Rearden Personal Assistant's efforts to highlight greener travel options that adhere to corporate compliance guidelines. We're delighted to be joining forces with Rearden Commerce to give their customers even more choice and flexibility in how they travel."