Data trends ■


Amon Cohen


Painting by numbers


Analysis of payment providers’ data illustrates how buyers are gaining better control of spend


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f you are a travel manager, pat yourself on the back, award yourself a gold star and crack open a bottle of something agreeable – though in the spirit of what you


have achieved, moderately priced. The cause for modest celebration? Data on spend through corporate payment pro- viders in 2016 suggests travel managers are doing an excellent job of bringing costs under control and getting travel- lers to book smarter than ever before. Air ticket purchase figures by UK customers of Airplus International (see box) show the average fare rose slightly from £529 to £531 in 2016. However, further analysis reveals that this is because travellers took a higher proportion of long-haul flights and a lower proportion of domestic flights. As a consequence, the proportion of flights in business class and premium economy also climbed. There is not much travel managers can do to control where employees


BBT CORPORATE CARDS SUPPLEMENT 2017


in their organisation fly, but they can influence how much is paid, and the average fare in all cabins fell in 2016. Airplus’ figures also offer some expla- nations for how buyers achieved this commendable decrease. One is that the average number of days tickets were bought in advance of departure length- ened from 20.6 in 2015 to 21.4 in 2016. That is only to be expected since the proportion of long-haul flights grew, and longer journeys tend to be booked further in advance. But a deeper data dive shows travellers booked further ahead when broken down by destina- tion, too. Advance booking of UK domestic flights lengthened from 16.8 to 17.1 days, continental flights from 20.6 to 21.2 days and long-haul from 30.1 to 30.5 days.


LOW-COST CARRIERS Another cause of lower average fares was that for the first time, Airplus UK customers bought more continental


air tickets on low-cost carriers than on legacy airlines in 2016, climbing from 49 per cent to 55 per cent. Other issuers report a similar trend. Bank of America Merrill Lynch says budget airline transactions by its commercial


“There is a trend to booking earlier for air. Buyers are after good deals for clients”


card customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa shot up 97 per cent in 2016, with traditional airlines losing 4 per cent market share. Increased competition contributed to average fares on low-cost carriers dropping 6 per cent, and 12 per cent for traditional airlines.


In association with


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