FOLLOWING a successful three-month Beta test with 20 companies taking part, award-winning travel business TapTrip has announced that Vessul – a new service dedicated to, and built for, marine and energy travel – will launch in October.

Vessul has been designed to manage the movement of workers in the marine and energy sector more efficiently.

Currently, booking travel in the marine energy sector is a fragmented, arduous and expensive process. Vessul gives travel bookers access to easy-to-use, hands-on, real-time travel management technology blended with human support to easily book, cancel, re-arrange and report on travel globally.

TapTrip has built a light touch, low-bandwidth mobile app (connectivity is traditionally poor at sea), which improves duty of care by centralising travel information to make it more streamlined, easier to access, manage, analyse and understand.

An API gives users live up to date COVID-related information on FCO advice, travel restrictions, and testing needed on arrival and departure wherever they are in the world.

Vessul also features a live piracy map showing all piracy and armed robbery incidents reported to IMB Piracy Reporting Centre during 2021. This will allow crews to make informed safety decisions based on historic and live data.

Vessul’s multi-city departures function lets companies book up to 50 flights (the GDS only allows up to nine) for multiple travellers in a single booking to arrive at the same destination at the same time, no matter where they depart from in the world.

TapTrip co-founder and CEO Thomas Young said, “We’re really excited about finally seeing Vessul set sail and making travel so much easier for marine and energy workers, business travel bookers and TMCs.

“At launch, Vessul will be available exclusively for TMCs with clients in the marine and energy sectors and we have a raft of major TMCs in the pipeline desperate to get started.

“Once we have access to more data and a greater understanding of the nuances of how it’s being used, a longer-term goal is to create a second version of Vessul for smaller companies with unmanaged travel.”

TMCs can register to receive information about the launch and how to book a demo at vessul.com.