MYSTERY BUYER STYMIED BY SUPPLIERS From rail to hotels, operators are letting corporate buyers down
THERE IS NO LONGER MUCH DIFFERENTIATION in the way suppliers communicate with corporate and leisure travellers. Many buyers increasingly have the impression that suppliers don’t really care how they make money, and they’re not too fussed about rewarding the people who give them huge volumes of business. In the hotel and airline industries, this tactic is largely driven by loyalty pro- grammes (upselling when you check in online is one example), but in the rail industry, they don’t have the resources to manage these two types of business separately and distribution has always been more fragmented. The reason procurement types get con- cerned about this is because if travellers book direct, we cannot meet the volumes we have committed to. Not only does it dilute revenues but we cannot see where our travellers are going, so clearly there’s a risk factor attached. It’s less of a problem with air travel because, in most industries, while people may be tempted to book on
Easyjet.com or
Ba.com, they understand the risks and want to be on someone’s radar in order to be protected. So they tend to be compliant and book within the prescribed channels. But in less mature categories, such as hotels and rail, it is a problem. Rail com- panies were dismayed when corporates pushed people into the back of the train as they lost loads of revenue. Much of this hasn’t come back but they try to entice travellers into the front of the train with offers, rather than giving specific deals to corporates. Furthermore, one of the leading train companies is now sending tickets to travellers on their mobile and if they book on the operator’s website or app, it will advise them 90 seconds before everyone else what platform their train is leaving from. They also now give an automatic refund for a service that gets cancelled. None of this is available through corporate booking channels. It appears the principal reason we can’t get access to these new enhancements is that the travel management companies
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
Many buyers increasingly have the impression that suppliers don’t really care how they make money
(TMCs) and rail booking intermediaries do not pass key details on to the train companies. That is a large part of the problem – and that is why suppliers have been able to get away with this for so long. It’s very irritating and this needs to change, or TMCs and intermediaries will lose our business.
LACK OF COMMUNICATION Hotels clearly do get guests’ details with bookings. Hoteliers have less excuse for not offering these deals direct to compa- nies, because they have huge corporate sales forces but, like airlines, they do not communicate with their media relations people who distribute the offers – that’s the frustration. This is an issue across the corporate community: we’re losing out in the areas of negotiated rates and business
continuity. For example, when the 7/7 terror attacks happened in London, my TMC sent me a list of all the travellers they had booked on trains into London within 30 minutes. When travellers are booking direct, I can’t see that information and we can’t do anything for those people. Hoteliers encourage travellers to go to their website to get free wifi and deals they can’t get anywhere else. It’s only when buyers remind suppliers of how much they spend, that the hotelier may be pushed into preparing a communication to travellers. This misses the point: it is a reactive statement based on the fact they shouldn’t have sent out a blanket- coverage communication in the first place – and they only do it when hassled. Normally, when we are considering a thorny problem, there is the procurement challenge and the user challenge, and they are often in conflict. In this instance, if resolved and the rail travellers did use the preferred channels, they would get so much more (wifi, parking, breakfast, late cancellation), which is frustrating. I understand ITM’s Industry Affairs
Group has this on its radar and is trying to do something about it. It is definitely something that ACTE and ITM should be working on. ■ For more views and comments, see Yourspace, p122
BBT MAY/JUNE 2016 43
Illustration: Ben Southan
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