gone down that route – with that comes the paid-for service model, driving up the auxiliary fees. Again, improving employee behaviour reduces fees. Benefits we can offer include streamlining reconciliation – integrating expense management systems into your process so that some auxiliaries can be coded to automatically flow through your files from Amex cards.
What are the biggest challenges facing
American Express and the
business travel community? The biggest challenge is the crystal ball we haven’t got regarding the economy. It’s
how we help our customers manage their travel budgets in those uncertain conditions, and maximising the spend they do have.
So what advice are you giving your customers in these testing times? The control aspect is becoming really dominant – controls at point of sale, and
looking at policy and adapting it to suit conditions. This involves changes
to travel management inside your organisation. There’s a variety of levers customers can use to reduce spend. Going online to book has a double impact: it saves on fees; and the online booking tool controls content. Then there’s looking at your policy regarding who is flying in premium cabins and how it’s applied across senior management. There’s looking at consolidating your data and spend, and seeing where deals could be different or better. Also, it’s your traveller behaviour
– every day we’re helping travel managers educate their travellers and change behaviour. The more effective we get at managing interaction between the traveller and our phone centre or online booking, the more effectively we can drive the programme. If I can speed up the booking process because the traveller is more aware, I can offer the savings back to the customer.
On the flipside, we offer services
like our international rate desk. It has our most experienced consultants working on very detailed multi- sector global itineraries. The content is changing all the time and the consultants are looking at content
Talking business
changes and how airlines are managing their yield – they can find deals saving the customer 10-20 per cent, a significant amount on a $20- 30,000 fare. We’re seeing this service being used increasingly.
American Express recently formed a partnership with events firm WRG in the UK, and has similar deals elsewhere. Can you tell us about Amex’s strategy for the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) market? We’ve successfully integrated our traditional booking processes with our meetings and events business – from 10 people on a plane to Turkistan to fully integrated end-to-end MICE bookings, from sales conferences to car and product launches. The partnership with WRG gives us a creative edge. We are setting some really aggressive growth targets for MICE business in 2012. We’ve invested heavily in back-office technology to streamline our processes, and front office tech for our customers to use, such as managing pre-registration for events. n