ON THE GROUND IN BRIEF
• AVAILABILITY of the Stansted Express low-cost 30-day advance offer has been extended to the end of September. It offers savings on standard tickets with prices from £8 for travel between London Liverpool Street station and Stansted Airport. The deal is available exclusively online, as a mobile or print@home ticket.
• ENTERPRISE Rent-A-Car has signed new agreements with a number of travel management companies, including American Express Travel and BCD Travel. The move follows Enterprise’s major pan-European expansion programme to offer car hire in 29 countries.
• GATWICK Airport has welcomed news that Govia has been awarded the Thameslink franchise. The announce- ment means that rail services to and from Gatwick Airport will be transformed with new, high-quality trains, better station facilities and more reliable services connecting even more people with the airport. In addition to improvements to Gatwick’s existing rail services, new trains will be introduced on the dedicated non-stop Gatwick Express service to London Victoria.
• GRAY Dawes Travel & Expense Management has a new partnership with chauffeur drive company Capstar Chauffeurs. Capstar began trading nine months ago and today employs 11 drivers, all of whom have previously served with the British Armed Forces. The company is the first commercial venture of its kind to employ and retrain ex-military personnel who have been wounded in action.
• AVIS has a newly-refurbished location at London Heathrow. The new position has allowed Avis to gain an extra exit lane for a speedier onward journey and to add undercover parking spaces. A number of benefits designed to reduce waiting times have been added for Avis Preferred members.
• EUROPCAR has added the option of 4G mobile wifi hotspots, available for hire from its airport locations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester. The 4G connection costs £9 per day with unlimited data.
Smart tickets
Greeley Koch Executive Director, Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE)
T
CORPORATE customers of
thetrainline.com can now access their business travel bookings on a smartphone via the company’s existing mobile app. Travellers can use the app to
log in to both their personal and business trainline accounts, with bookings made via the latter including all the essential details and a ticket on departure collection reference. The new functionality is currently available in thetrainline's Android and iPhone apps and to the majority of its TMC and corporate clients. It is expected that customers will
be able to fulfil business bookings made online using the Trainline Self
Book, Trainline Professional or Trainline Connect systems to barcode m-tickets delivered to the app later in the year. “Our app has already been
downloaded by more than five million customers and in a more consumerised business market it makes perfect sense to use that same app to give business users access to their bookings,” says Ben Pearson,
thetrainline.com’s commercial director. He adds: “This new functionality
sits perfectly alongside the other great benefits of the mobile app such as live departure information, tube status and next train home information.”
AVIS ADDS MOBILE WIFI
he essence of procurement is that everything has a perceived value and a
negotiated cost; that supply should meet demand in a way that funds that can be used for anything else are not tied up in pointless inventory or pricey services; that all services are essential to the corporate objective, and that every aspect of a corporate purchase is measurable through one process or another. Procurement is the most scientific and mathematical approach to the purchase of anything. It is where economies of scale rule. But business travel is the closest thing to an exception. This is because unlike every other
commodity bought and sold, business travel is personal. And it tends to get very personal as corporate interests venture into the most rural, politically unstable, or culturally demanding destinations. These are the destinations that defy commonplace competitive bidding. For many business travellers, the significance of meeting the corporate objective trumps policies determined by economic scale. But who ultimately decides? The
travel policy for 'Generation Y' business travellers will be geared for those who require the freedom of making their travel arrangements on electronic devices of their choice. It will be an abbreviated policy to guide those who understand the spirit behind fulfilling the corporate objective. In essence, the policy and the travel department will do more to support the end user – the business traveller – as opposed to simply monitoring expenses. What of economies of scale?
AVIS Car Rental has launched mobile wifi across 12 markets in Europe, giving business travellers access to 1GB per day internet access from £8.50 per day, to stay connected while on the move. The mobile wifi unit enables users
to connect with up to five devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, at any one time. The compact, portable design means it
can be taken out of the car, to the hotel, conference or meeting, all with uninterrupted connectivity. The new service also gives
customers cross-border connectivity, with no roaming charges, claimed to be a first for the car hire industry in Europe. With a fast download speed of 21.6 mbps, even video- conferencing and accessing large documents online is possible.
There will always be a review process to keep expenses in perspective with the corporate objective. Yet as an increasing number of companies shift more discretion in policy application to the end user, new economies of scale could be achieved by factoring in leisure travel. Companies providing an additional channel for employees booking their own leisure travel could very well enjoy some further measure of discount through the direction of the additional volume.
ACTE UPDATE
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 45
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 41
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