The Ponant fleet is managed by Uvea Marine Services (UMS) manning agency, servicing all crew members onboard. Ponant’s head office is in Marseille, where a team of crew managers supervise all of the operational, technical and hotel crew on board. The variety of entertainment services offered aboard Ponant’s cruises mean that a large team of crew is required for each trip, with operational, technical and entertainment crew each managed by a dedicated team of crew managers.
Although all of Ponant’s yachts operate under the French flag, the organisation has a crew comprising of over 25 different nationalities. In order to navigate the complexities that occur as a result of having such a diverse team, as well as managing payroll, training and scheduling, Ponant implemented Adonis Personnel Manager (APM).
The Challenge
Ponant’s plans for growth demanded the creation of a robust, scalable travel programme that would be able to take the strain of increased travel volume. This provided a great opportunity to improve the efficiency of Ponant’s existing travel booking process, in which crew management teams arranged travel with two different travel management companies (TMCs).
With Ponant’s fleet of cruise yachts set to increase from 9 to 12 in the next two years, the volume of crew travel would also increase by 111%, from 6000 trips transactions per year in 2019 to an estimated 12,500 in 2021. Consequently, reducing the amount of time and money spent on crew travel was a top priority for Ponant.
Improve the organisation of crew travel in anticipation of increased volumes, without having to employ more people in the crewing or travel management teams.
Drive cost optimisation so that increased volumes would not result in a similar increase in total travel spend.
The Solution
In order to achieve greater efficiency and reduced cost savings, Ponant contracted ATPI Yacht Travel to assist them with designing a more efficient crew travel workflow (via ATPI CrewLink), drive more direct cost savings (via ATPI’s Global Faring), and provide visibility of travel spend to highlight cost saving opportunities (via ATPI Analytics).
To develop a more efficient travel management process, ATPI worked alongside Adonis to create a seamless integration between ATPI CrewLink and APM – a solution that combined the best of both management systems, guided by ATPI and Adonis’ principles, ‘Delivering what really matters’ and ‘Do what you do best’.
Adonis ensured that planning travel would be easy and that the correct data would be generated in APM, ready to submit a travel request to ATPI CrewLink in the right format. In turn, ATPI CrewLink manages the entire travel booking cycle.
Adonis embedded ATPI CrewLink into their software, so that all communication regarding Ponant’s travel bookings is processed, without any additional IT infrastructure required, allowing the Ponant users to easily manage their travel bookings from within their APM screen.
This embedded workflow facilitates a more efficient, reliable and accurate travel booking process, eliminating manual communication and any possibility for human errors. As a result, Ponant’s crew managers are now empowered to take control of each booking, while also being able to dedicate more time to other important tasks when organising a port call.
Integrating travel and personnel management systems has allowed for greater cooperation between Ponant’s crew managers and their colleagues, enabling better time management and communication regarding the live status of each rotation.
Prior to the integration between ATPI CrewLink and Adonis, we had to look in a variety of places to find traveller and scheduling information, which took up a lot of time. Now, everything is in one place. All bookings and arrangements are trackable and we no longer have to search our inboxes to find confirmations. We’re incredibly satisfied with the whole system!
Ponant
The Result
New processes and technology have enabled Ponant to successfully manage increased travel volumes with less resource.
The time spent on managing travel for on- and off- signing crew has decreased substantially and processes have become much more reliable, improving the accuracy of travel data and management information.
New processes have proved so successful that Ponant have now extended them beyond the booking of flights, to the arrangement of accommodation also.
The integration of ATPI CrewLink and Adonis has transformed the way that we work for the better. We have certainly become more efficient in terms of managing crew travel, as we no longer need to copy and transfer crews’ personal data multiple times. Everything is now managed within ATPI CrewLink and Adonis, meaning that typos and errors are now a thing of the past and the whole booking process has been reduced to 3-4 clicks.
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