THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39
THE REVIEW ›› THE LOWDOWN Variations on a theme
BTS NEWS
"MANDATING a travel programme from the top
doesn’t necessarily mean people will follow suit. There’s still a lot of work to do to get people engaged and buying into it,” said Suzanne Cockburn, managing director/CEO at Gray Dawes, as she opened a discussion on ways in which to run and control a travel programme. Attendees at the BTS ‘From mandate to influence’ seminar heard from two travel buyers: Ben Park of Parexel, and Philip Haxne of Sony Mobile Communications. Parexel, a clinical trials company
with 13,500 employees across 50 countries, launched a managed travel programme in 2009 and recently consolidated its partners and suppliers. Park explained that the company focuses not just on savings, but also on service, safety and sustainability.
converted to a Q&A format and also condensed to a single-page version with key points “which was a huge success”, says Haxne. “We also told our TMC to push
“Most companies only look at
savings, but each ‘s’ has the same value to us,” says Park. “You have to look at them all to understand the true value of a managed travel programme and you might find that people enjoy their travel and you won’t need to police it.” Sony Mobile’s Haxne, meanwhile,
explained that he had full support from the CEO when a travel optim- isation programme was launched in 2010. The travel policy was
CWT'S HELPING HAND
BTS NEWS
CARLSON Wagonlit Travel has launched a new
department, New Technology Solutions, which will work alongside programme managers to find solutions for challenges such as DIY travellers. On this particular trend CWT's
Nigel Turner says that some travel managers “don’t know what to do once travellers have a smart device. They need to manage the travellers, not the bookers.” The new department
aims to create a series of tools that will put the control back in the hands of the buyer. Elsewhere, CWT has had some
success negotiating ancillary fees and fuel surcharges into annual contracts with airline suppliers. “It means leveraging all your spend, and SMEs are more likely to get a value add such as lounge passes than a price drop, which is the domain of a large corporate with larger volumes,” Turner explains.
travellers that called them on the phone back online if what they wanted to book could be done online,” says Haxne. “We had very little negative feedback.” Year one of the programme yielded 25 per cent overall cost reduction and online adoption of 67 per cent. The company is now looking at incentivising the travel programme with a points system. Gray Dawes’ Cockburn says, “Moderating this session really highlighted to me the importance of the key components of a travel programme: a policy or structure, buy-in from senior management, an engaged TMC, and good tech- nology that moves with the times.”
ATPI GOES VIP
BTS NEWS
ATPI is re-launching a bespoke service to legal
and financial companies who require a high-touch service. “It’s formalising what we’ve already been doing,” says Adam Knights, ATPI's group sales director. City Sector will arrange everything from online check-in and preferred taxi services to private holidays. Chambers Travel Management has launched a similar service called Chambers Private Clients.
IN BRIEF
BTS NEWS
• HILLGATE Travel announced an enhanced expense management
solution at BTS – GateWay with Concur Expense. The TMC has extended its partnership with Concur by integrating its own FreeWay booking tool with Concur Expense through the TripIt mobile platform. Travel bookings made through Hillgate can now be captured by TripIt and subsequently used to pre-populate expense claims in Concur Expense. Miscellaneous cash expenses can be added manually via Concur’s mobile app or Hillgate’s own online travel portal. “This will revolutionise business travel for our clients by giving them full visibility of one of their largest business costs,” says Hillgate’s head of strategic business development, Julian Munsey. “This simple solution will give them increased control over their spend while driving process effi ciencies.”
BTS NEWS
• HRG UK managing director Ian Windsor says the company’s
67 offi ces across Europe will be consolidated without affecting the number of countries in their portfolio. “There are 16 offi ces in Germany, for example, and we don’t need 16,” he says. Falling revenues from smaller volumes of transactions is at the root of the consolidation plans. “The world is changing,” he says. He predicts more consolidation from airlines and the growth of data analysts into the TMC business, which is why HRG's operations team handle the day-to-day client relationship, leaving more strategic roles to its business managers.
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