THE DEBATE


WILL FOCUS SHIFT TO THE TRAVELLERS?


Diane Bouzebiba Managing Director, Amadeus UK & Ireland


Diane joined Amadeus in 2001 and was promoted to her current role of managing director of Amadeus UK & Ireland in January 2012, where she is now responsible for a workforce of around 100 people. Since starting at Amadeus, Diane has been exposed to a number of different business units within the company. Most recently she was head of the rail business unit, for which she had global responsibility. Diane has also headed up projects within the hotel and tours section of the company, and has experience working as senior manager within the front offi ce business development division. Prior to joining Amadeus, Diane worked as operations director for TechLink where she successfully managed to increase turnover by 40 per cent in 2000.


Chris Crowley Senior Vice President, Global Client Management EMEA, BCD Travel


As leader of BCD Travel’s global client management team in EMEA, Chris Crowley is responsible for driving satisfaction, fi nancial performance, retention and expansion across markets for core global customers. Chris is a 20-year travel industry veteran whose background in the travel management and hotel sectors offers a fi rm understanding of the need for corporate travel programmes to establish clearly articulated positions on a host of ever-changing industry challenges. Chris recently completed a successful two-year term as president of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. Prior to joining BCD Travel, Chris held executive sales positions with Concorde Hotels, Radisson SAS Hotels, Accor Hotels & Grange Hotels.


Should travel managers modify their programmes to allow open booking, modify polices, utilising gamification, best pricing shopping and so on? In effect, changing the corporate travel programme to be more about the traveller and less about management. Three industry experts debate the issue of Travel Management 2.0


THE BUYER ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTION


There is no doubt that as the 'Millennial' generation joins the workforce in much greater numbers, we see our fellow corporate travel managers facing, as we did, an increasing demand to adjust their programmes in embracing more social mediums, more mobile technologies and, at a minimum, their communications, in order to successfully support a company's traveller base. We are finding that Millennial employees work


differently in that they tend to be: more technology savvy; embracing of networking and social mediums; want to shop around and make their own decisions; make their own opinions known and share ratings of suppliers; trust their peers over the ’experts’; want and use consumer technology at work; and use multiple mobile platforms. There is no question that the social and mobile


revolutions are real, with an estimated 4.5 billion social users and over 1.7 billion touch devices sold in 2012 alone! So the real questions are: how


THE TECH COMPANY


DIANE BOUZEBIBA When I first used Google in the late 1990s I remember feeling somewhat underwhelmed. In the early days the internet was less than inspiring with its text-heavy formats and boxy banners. Then along came Web 2.0, which superseded the


previously one-dimensional approach. Suddenly the web became a whole lot more interesting and collaborative. Web 2.0 added breadth, peers and personalisation. Is the same thing about to happen with Travel Management 2.0? Let’s hope so. We are already seeing big changes in corporate


travel. The days of implementing a static corporate travel policy are over. It must no longer be seen as a tick-box exercise that massively undervalues the efficiency gains to be won. TMCs can no longer afford to simply be order takers. They must be proactive travel advisors especially in times of unexpected change or crisis, which in a global marketplace are all too common. As for technology, expect it to continue to evolve and become more adaptive and human. The arrival of the online self booking tool was a


great emancipator. It freed travellers from the drudgery of contacting their travel consultant for every little query. Unsurprisingly, a recent Amadeus survey of UK & Ireland business travellers revealed that 66 per cent of travellers are now able to book using an online tool. Rather than threatening the


do you build the next generation of travel management to enable our workforce to become more nimble and efficient? How do you embrace changing tech- nologies, that an increasingly younger generation are going to use, rather than trying to command and control them? Shouldn’t the bottom line be about empowering an employee's success via transparency, which ultimately leads to travel policy compliance? Which all leads to increased employee productivity,


true competitive advantage, greater company success and, ultimately, employee satisfaction. After all, that only makes 'sense and pence'! And as we see it, this is the revolution of corporate travel management. So, what is the debate?


"We are already seeing big changes in corporate travel, and the days of implementing a static corporate


travel policy are well and truly over"


role of the TMC, automation has enhanced it. It enables the TMC to offer high-touch and low-touch service at different price points, with the goal of moving a greater proportion of services from administration to travel consultancy. The technology challenge


now is to integrate the disparate systems that already exist. It is about using data as a


decision-support tool, and that includes making use of the kind of peer-to-peer insight that is shared in the office corridors and on social media. A priority moving forward will be how to harness big data and turn it into usable business intelligence. Applications that help fulfil duty of care


responsibilities – such as traveller tracking – are going to play an increasingly vital role. We see value in extending the policy-compliant desktop


24 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE


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