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editor@buyingbusinesstravel.com
ONE OF THE MOST UNUSUAL STORIES to emerge from the Sochi Winter Olympic Games was the unfortunate incident involving the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s luggage. Following a last-minute funding plea, the team raised £60,000 enabling them to compete, but missed their first training session after their sleigh and kit went missing in transit to Russia. With deadlines to meet, or events to appear at, who can assist when disaster strikes? Thankfully for the Jamaican
athletes, other teams came to their rescue and lent them kit until their luggage eventually arrived. However, your employees might not be so lucky. The best business travel policy not only covers the cost of replacing lost luggage, but it also delivers in more serious situations such as medical emergencies and evacuation. It offers pre- travel location advice to help employees prepare, and then keeps them up-to-date with events on the ground. Providing staff with
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wallet-sized helpline cards, introducing an SMS text service, and incorporating good travel practice advice into the company’s official travel and HR procedures, are also practical steps that a good insurer can work with you on, to help keep your employees safe on the road – with or without their sleigh. Stéphane Baj
Regional director of A&H
corporate and affinity EMEA, ACE Group
ONLINE & FORUM
IT APPEARS TO ME THAT our market has a blind obsession with ‘online’. We seem to see it as the ultimate solution for today’s travel management issues. However, I am yet to find an answer to a simple question: where are the proven financial benefits for the corporation? We all understand there is one financial benefit – an average lower transaction cost. But each process and every model (and online is no exception) has a fully considered financial balance: P&L [profit and loss]. In this case, ‘P’ is the lower transaction fees and head-count savings in transaction costs. ‘L’ should stand for the charges – direct and indirect, clear and hidden – including the cost of training, IT, HR, implementation and future upgrades – and the cost of self-search, as travellers undertake the role of the agent. So I am yet to see evidence of the financial benefit for the corporate customer. It would be great if somebody could present me with an example of such financial analysis, reflecting true cost. Stanislav Kostyashkin CEO, Continent Express, Moscow
SIMON MCLEAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CLICK TRAVEL REPLIES: The real value of online services is transparency. The revenue models of most
BBTWEETS
Travel tweeters: follow us on @BBT_online and @Travelbizpaul
@JetGents Japan’s Skymark Airlines to bring the Airbus A380 to New York JFK later this year
@philip_waller Deutsche Bahn indefinitely postpones plans to run London-Frankfurt trains because UK isn’t in Schengen area
lnkd.in/djxNJpj
@SecretaryFoxx Both sides of the aisle, public and private sectors agree: our infrastructure deficit is real
1.usa.gov/1kdfLzb
@algore China becomes world’s biggest spender on energy efficiency, outpacing the US for the first time
traditional TMCs is generally underpinned by so-called “marketing agreements”, which is a sophisticated label for what are actually plain old back-handers. Push the right seats, in the right fare classes, on the right planes, for the right carriers, and bags of cash labelled ‘swag’ get delivered through the back door! Online systems sweep this
issue away because, instead of presenting you with just a few carefully selected options, they present you with a broad view of the entire marketplace (well, they should, and good ones do). More choice, and more fares, ultimately leads to better decisions and increased savings. Another key benefit of transparency is visual guilt – behaviour changes when travellers can see a hotel that's half the price of the one they usually stay in. ■ Read this debate in full at
buyingbusinesstravel.com
@richardquest Major retailer Eddie Bauer sold for less than a billion. And they “make things”. Sorry @samuelcnn US$16bn for Whatsapp is a silly sum
@greeleykoch People on conference calls in the airport bathroom. Really?!?!?
@updeshkapur @airchive I read that the last DC10 will be scrapped. In fact the Biman aircraft's final resting place will be the Bruntingthorpe Aviation Museum in the UK
@MelanieGLondon The very fact that open booking is controversial is controversial to Concur says CEO Steve Singh
ON THE 2014 BUSINESS TRAVEL SHOW: ONCE AGAIN, it was a great opportunity to network, both on and off my company’s stand. I met dozens of new contacts that will almost definitely prove useful in the very near future – and I also enjoyed myself.
HAD A PRODUCTIVE DAY at the show yesterday. Made a lot of new contacts, caught up with plenty of old ones, and attended a couple of insightful seminars. Attendance seemed to be up on last year and there was a lively buzz in the hall.
IT'S OBVIOUS THAT business travel is on the return, from the people at the show. One thing though – people tend to do the sales talk without asking me who I am, what my company's needs are etc. But then, that's life – good salespeople are hard to find. I'll go again next year.
MARCH/APRIL 2014
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