GUEST COLUMN IN BRIEF
BTS NEWS
• THERE are savings of up to 99 per cent to be made on mobile
broadband data roaming charges by using the world’s fi rst always-local mobile broadband, claims a new company. Able to link to a laptop, iPad, iPhone or android phone, the globalgig hotspot device connects to the local mobile network. Plans start at £10 per month for 1GB of data, plus £50 to purchase globalgig hotspot. There are volume discounts when buying over 50 devices. It is available for travellers in the UK, US, Australia and from April, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the rest of Europe. “There will be connectivity with 30 countries by the end of April,” says globalgig's CEO Nigel Bramwell.
BTS NEWS
• MOST business travellers now have access to corporate booking
tools, but only a third are able to make booking via mobile booking tools. That’s according to research by Amadeus and ICM, whose report, The 21st Century Business Traveller, reveals a fast-changing business landscape and the ways in which technology is impacting it. “We’ve entered into a new era of travel management,” says Diane Bouzebiba, managing director of Amadeus UK and Ireland. “We’ve reached the tipping point on the number of those who can make their own travel plans through online corporate booking tools. This is inevitably going to have an effect on travel departments, who will fi nd themselves moving away from a traditional model of booking clients’ business travel to one in which they are acting more like consultants, providing added value and superior service.”
BTS NEWS
• FCM Travel Solutions is set to launch a smartphone app for its
customers that will give users access to their travel itineraries, enable them to receive fl ight status notifi cations and to check-in for fl ights. It will also feature useful information such as airport guides, currency conversion and weather forecasts. FCm's global product manager traveller services, Katie Thomas, says, “This is a fully integrated product within FCm’s suite of global technology tools and not simply a resale of an existing mobile solution on the market.” The app is still in its testing phase but is expected to go live within the next three months and will be available for users of Android, BlackBerry and iOS smartphones.
Heads in the sand I
BTS NEWS
THE final session on Centre Stage at BTS, 'Policy – how
vogue is rogue', tackled whether maverick travellers is a big issue. The general consensus was that it was not but that other issues needed addressing, as in the behaviour of younger generations. Speaker Jennifer Steinke, director
of corporate travel, meetings & expense at US Foods, said: “It’s not maverick but the business is becoming more traveller centric and more personalised and there- fore programmes need modifying.” A set of rules still needed to apply, agreed all the speakers, so that if travellers book elsewhere they still send the information to the right place. Buyer Margaret Birse of Serco had concerns over productivity
issues: “We don’t want our travellers spending time deciding on travel for a £5 difference when they’re worth £300 an hour, so how much leeway do you give them? We don’t want to micro manage our travellers.” Steinke said travellers genuinely
wanted to do the right thing and save money. “If I trust an employee to sign off a multimillion dollar project then I trust them to book a flight,” she said. Nonetheless, Steinke warned:
“Assume the system is going to change; it’s going to be faster and more dynamic and with more data at our fingertips. We can’t be ostriches and have our heads in the sand. Travel managers should be asking, ‘How do I get it now and how do I get it my way?”
REDFERN SILENCES DOUBTERS
BTS NEWS
NEARLY one year on from starting the roll-out on “the
biggest contract the government has ever awarded to an SME” and Redfern Travel has silenced its doubters, says joint CEO Mark Bowers. The TMC became the nominated supplier of UK travel management to government in 2011 and the introduction of its tRIPS system began last April. “All the KPIs have been met and
everything has been delivered on time,” says Bowers. He adds that the level of surprise from others when awarded the contract wasn’t unexpected, “but we were surprised by the level of vitriol. It didn’t concern us though as we knew this was within our capability. The plaudits since have been amazing. We’ve
changed a lot of people’s opinions.” Redfern was tasked with taking
95 per cent of bookings online by the end of the initial three-year contract term but met the target within seven months. The TMC’s turnover has rocketed
from £45million to an estimated £185million and staff numbers have doubled, and it claims to manage eight times the average number of transactions per head of staff than other TMCs. It announced a deal with Cabfind
at BTS, making it the first TMC to have a fully integrated taxi booking facility within its online portal. “Cabfind completes the journey,”
says Bowers. “It’s an intelligent, postcode to postcode tool. Everything drops into the basket to make it a single transaction.”
John Cooper Marketing Director, The Giles Group
s there room for social media in business travel management? General TMC practices and even semantics would suggest not. And as more and more corporates introduce social media control policies during working hours and for company devices, social media’s viability as a professional B2B communication method is beginning to look questionable. However, as a marketeer I guess I’m pre-determined to argue “yes, there's room”. Any brand wants to develop stronger ties with its customers and the ability to reach them on a personal level and directly engage them in online ‘conversation’ can only be a good thing, right? Maybe. It’s easy for marketeers to get carried away with social media. The hype that’s surrounded it for the past few years has firmly placed travel marketing departments under its spell. Almost without exception, social media is presented as the new frontier of brand communication and, aside from the domain of celebrity gossip, there have been some impressive B2B examples. However, for every campaign which cuts through, there are at least a dozen which fail to justify the time and expense invested in them. Let's be honest, most brands do social media because most other brands are doing social media and TMCs are no different. Companies often jump on this bandwagon with no real strategy, either wanting to be seen as cool or through paranoid fear of appearing out of touch. But where is the benefit to the traveller? Sure, Twitter alerts of delayed flights are fantastically useful, but does getting thousands of Facebook friends deem a campaign successful? Social media is here to stay and TMCs must figure out how to make it work for them. And the definition of that mustn’t just be the number of ‘followers’ they have, it’s how many more airline tickets and hotel nights they can sell because of it.
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 35
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