THE COLLECTOR
IN THE WORDS OF BRUCIE: “What do points make? Prizes!” We probably all know many business travellers for whom travelling on a specific airline is all about changing the colour of their frequent flyer programme card to gold or black. For the collector, it is not the specific behaviour that is maverick – they may use many tricks to fly with their favourite airline – but rather the end itself.
TB: “Capture any habits in a non-compliance report to be addressed. Log and flag in a name- and-shame list, or tip it on its head and highly praise those who do the right thing.”
MT: “Allowing travellers to collect loyalty points can be a good thing, and create a good travel- ler experience. However, to stop this costing the company a fortune, you need to control it with a travel policy that is built into the booking process. This way, the traveller can only book their favourite when it is delivering best-value for the organisation.”
THE MEETING PLANNER
YOU’RE A TRAVELLER and you have to arrange a meeting with a client. You know there are two flights a day to the client’s city – one in the morning on Pamper Air and the other in the evening on Frillfree Airlines. Quite coincidentally, meetings with the client always happen in early afternoon and the traveller is forced to go off-policy and fly Pamper. We all know the stories about budget carriers not always flying to the right airport, but this is changing. On major routes, travel managers should conduct total cost analysis and time analysis between key city pairs. Ideally,
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
your technology (online tool or TMC) should be able to present this total trip cost at the time of booking, and, critically, be able to report on it so that line manag- ers can make informed decisions with staff.
TB: “There may be travellers who work the system, but in many organisations, employees want to do the right thing, want to save the company money and act responsibly.”
CP: “For those with demand management initiatives – trying to discourage travel – you would be amazed how your videocon-
ference usage can increase if you are stronger on influencing travellers away from their airline of choice.”
MT: “The best way to tackle this kind of booking is through analysing travel behaviour. If you see a pattern emerging, it may need tackling head-on. However, if there is a genuine need to have meetings at a certain time, it’s worth looking at the alternatives. For example, it may be cheaper to travel with Frillfree Airlines the night before and stay in a nice hotel, rather than travelling on Pamper Air the next morning.”
BBT NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 69
THE SPEED MERCHANT
MANY EMPLOYEES BELIEVE THAT doing things by the book takes time. There is a widespread belief that not following policy on the preferred process of making a booking can save the individual time (especially when online) and the company money, because they are able to book earlier.
TB: “Key considerations of this include duty-of- care – by avoiding company process, the organ- isation loses visibility of both the spend and the traveller. And by ignoring company processes and searching travel independently, travellers inadver- tently spend a lot of time trying to save small costs. This does not always equate to their hourly rate and is ultimately an expensive way to book travel.”
MT: “With the self-booking tools [SBTs] available, the booking process should be simple and quick for all travellers. If they enjoy booking for themselves on a consumer website, you need to make sure the approved booking process is just as easy – if they need a classroom-style training session to use your SBT, then it’s probably overly complicated.”
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