Following £1.7 million investment raised during the pandemic, innovative online business travel company TapTrip has launched a new product: “Vessul” – a specialist business travel service designed to support the flow of goods and people within the marine and energy industry.

The Coronavirus pandemic has placed massive strain on several industries, with energy providers and marine companies seeing a massive increase in demand. With more people currently at home due to the restrictions, households are using more energy and people are ordering more products online than ever before – putting a massive strain on the availability of shipping containers, vessels and the people required to keep things moving.

Vessul was therefore designed to help manage the movement of essential workers from the marine and energies industries in a more efficient way. Staggeringly, 98% of travel booking for the marine sector is still offline, which can cause massive issues with crews not arriving in the correct location, at the correct time, for the correct job – leading to delays and issues further down the supply chain.

Using similar technology to TapTrip – which seamlessly manages business travel and expenses for clients – Vessul is set to revolutionise the industry and companies using the online booking tool will be able to book and manage small to medium crew rotations, further driving efficiency gains and cost saving opportunities for its clients.

Companies using Vessul will be able to see the availability of seats on chartered flights and offer spaces out to companies within their industry – which ensures flights are at 100% capacity, crews get to vessels on-time and reduces carbon footprint simultaneously.

Vessul also features a multi-city departures function, a smart tool and the first of its kind in the industry, which enables oil and marine companies to book flights for multiple travellers to arrive at the same destination at the same time, no matter where they depart from in the world.

Thomas Young, CEO of TapTrip, said: “During lockdown, it’s become more important than ever that our energy and marine services run smoothly. Thanks to Brexit and travel restrictions, we’ve already seen the large-scale disruption that can be caused by a simple supply chain issue, and with the massively increased pressure on both sectors – there just isn’t room for error. Vessul will completely remove the burden of arranging travel for crews around the world, allowing employers to direct more of their resources to other areas of the business that are currently under strain.

“We created Vessul in direct response to a sector need to facilitate more fluid travel for essential workers that still need to move around the world to make sure we can keep the lights on and the goods moving so we can go about our daily lives.”