Feature: Booking Tools


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our mobility and agility strategy by empowering our travellers to make their own arrangements on a 24/7 basis, regardless of their location. ”The added benefit has been that our travellers


and bookers are actually thinking twice about what they are booking as the system is now intuitive enough to prompt them to re-select alternative tickets if they have not chosen the best deal available at that time for both parts of their journey,” she says. Mandviwala says there are additional benefits


with travel policy built into the system thus eliminating maverick spend as well as time saved in terms of management information provided by the tool to demonstrate savings gained from forward planning and pre- purchasing. Overall, she says that the online booking tool has helped the company be more flexible and get employees to where EC Harris customers need them to be.


MANAGING MEETINGS With online tools for air, hotel and rail all maturing, there is another component of travel crying out to be managed more effectively although opinion is divided on the best approach. Corporates are beginning to talk about meetings management and how online tools can help in this traditionally high-touch area. There is the view that it will continue to require


high degrees of human interaction while some are looking at automating part of the process. A recent survey carried out by the Business Travel


& Meetings Show of 220 procurement, meetings and business travel managers demonstrates the new focus on spend with 69 per cent of meetings budgets remaining static or declining in the past year. The research goes on to reveal that 38 per cent of companies are still without a meetings policy and 80 per cent do not use technology to manage their meeting spend. Kevin Iwamoto, vice president of enterprises


“With SBTs companies don’t really care that the traveller is inconvenienced by having to do it online, but with meetings it’s different and the experience is critical”


However, Iwamoto agrees that in order to provide a really good meeting experience high- touch elements such as the creative side, the decoration and the menus need to be covered too. “With self-booking tools companies don’t really care


and strategy at StarCite, a specialist in meeting management, says that although the concept of managing meetings on an enterprise-wide basis started ten years ago the move to online management will be far quicker. “A lot of our European customers get it and


see meetings as the last frontier of travel spend and it’s not just cost effective but they are also looking at it from the risk mitigation angle,” says Iwamoto. He adds that it is generally the larger companies that are focusing on meeting spend by virtue of the fact that they are spending a lot more. However, there is also some education to be done with smaller companies which often don’t think of meetings as both external and internal and include functions such as training or motivational events. The amount that can be automated goes from


the venue finding and RFP process to delegate registration, attendee lists and space manage- ment, and on to payment and reconciliation.


that the traveller is inconvenienced by having to do it online but with meetings it’s different and experience is critical to the success of the event. We take out the administration piece which is automatable and they can focus on the event.” Going forward StarCite is looking at what


other areas can be automated, such as further European currencies as well as the possibility of greater integration with other elements of the online process such as expense management. Carlson Wagonlit Travel is also looking at adding meetings management to its offering and part of that process has been its recent partnership with Cisco Telepresence to offer and manage virtual meetings. Whatever the online booking technology, it


is clear corporates will no longer consider it a ’nice to have’. The market has moved on with the realisation by most that technology is a must have in order to remain within the realms of recent legislation but also that there must be a measurable return on investment – costly technology that no one uses is not an option.


62 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 18 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE


BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM


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