{"id":178084,"date":"2025-04-17T14:45:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T12:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=178084"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:27:47","slug":"complaints-about-new-travel-agent-diversity-travel-i-dont-see-how-this-can-be-fixed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2025\/04\/17\/complaints-about-new-travel-agent-diversity-travel-i-dont-see-how-this-can-be-fixed\/","title":{"rendered":"Complaints about new travel agent Diversity Travel: ‘I don’t see how this can be fixed’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dozens of employees are dissatisfied with Diversity Travel, the mandatory booking system for business travel. They are complaining about high costs, a user-unfriendly platform, and inadequate customer service.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had my whole trip prepared through NS International and Booking.com, and then I realised: oh right, I need to do this through that<\/em> system.\u201d Assistant professor Melissa de Roos is referring to Diversity Travel, the university\u2019s new travel agent. \u201cI had to enter everything repeatedly. The Airbnb I had chosen wasn\u2019t supported, so I ended up with a rather expensive hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n

List of complaints <\/h2>

At two faculties, a list of complaints regarding Diversity Travel have already been compiled. They contain complaints from twenty different employees. These complaints include practical inconveniences (\u2018the site loads very slowly or crashes\u2019), pricing issues (\u2018the company promises to match online prices, but not for the prices listed on Skyscanner\u2019), lack of information during travel (\u2018people are not informed if their flight is cancelled\u2019), and the booking fees charged by Diversity Travel.<\/p>\n

Searching for a hotel in big cities also sometimes yields zero results; only when you search for specific neighbourhoods do hotels suddenly appear. This bug is soon to be fixed, says a spokesperson for Diversity Travel. According to the company, part of the other complaints is unfounded, and they are working on the technical issues.<\/p>\n

24-hour duty of care<\/h2>

Since January, employees have been required to book all their travel via Diversity Travel. According to the Executive Board, there are three reasons why this had to be centrally managed. The travel movements had to be tendered at a European level due to the overall costs. Also, it allows for better monitoring of whether employees are travelling sustainably. Additionally, the university has a duty of care towards travelling researchers, for instance, through a 24-hour emergency service, which it does not currently provide. Diversity Travel offers that. However, since its introduction, complaints have been pouring in.<\/p>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u2018Everything is worse: we spend more time, incur higher costs, the quality is lower, and we have less control\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

For Nick Koning, the situation has reached a breaking point. \u201cEverything is worse: we spend more time, incur higher costs, the quality is lower, and we have less control.\u201d The assistant professor at the Erasmus School of Economics has calculated on the back of the envelope that the \u2018borderline unusable\u2019 website, the outages, and the back-and-forth communication regarding booking errors cost ESE staff an additional 4,000 hours per year. \u201cHow does that compare to the minimal benefits, such as having more insight into CO2 compensation and whether people adhere to the train policy?\u201d, he wonders.<\/p>\n

No Airbnb<\/h2>\n\t
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Read also<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t