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TRAVEL STUDY


CONFERENCES


Study: women make better


business travellers


WOMEN ARE SAVING THEIR COMPANIES THOUSANDS OF POUNDS a year by booking flights earlier than their male counterparts. A study from Carlson Wagonlit Travel, which analysed 6.4 million air transactions, found women book flights 1.9 days earlier, paying on average 2 per cent less for their tickets than men. CWT said the financial implications of these findings


are “significant”. For companies with 1,000 business travellers, the difference – and therefore potential saving – is just under US$50,000 a year. That rises to US$1 million for a traveller base of 20,000. CWT Solutions Group worked with Javier Donna, assistant professor of economics at the Ohio State University, and Gregory Veramendi, assistant professor of economics at Arizona State University. Using advanced statistical techniques, they were able to quantify a direct link between gender and flight booking patterns.


RAIL


First Group teams up with MTR for South Western bid


FIRST GROUP HAS FORMED A PARTNERSHIP with Hong Kong-based MTR Corporation to bid for the South Western rail franchise.


The deal sees MTR take a 30 per stake in the joint


venture, which will compete with the franchise’s current operator, Stagecoach-owned South West Trains, in the tendering process for the new contract, which is due to begin in June 2017. The South Western franchise operates from London’s


Waterloo station to the city’s suburban commuter belt and the south coast of Dorset and Hampshire. It accounts for around 14 per cent of all rail journeys in the UK. The government is scheduled to make a decision on the new South Western franchise in February 2017.


10 BBT JULY/AUGUST 2016


Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort Special Report


GTMC conference


BBT EDITOR PAUL REVEL JOINED BOSSES from some of the leading TMCs for the annual GTMC conference, held this year at the Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort in Florida A study, unveiled at the event, showed despite business


travellers being conservative in their hotel choices, TMCs and buyers must tackle a strong preference for direct bookings. It found that travellers remain fairly traditional in their accommodation choices: 75 per cent prefer chain hotels, and even in the 18-29 age bracket this figure is 70 per cent. And only 4 per cent of these younger travellers said they preferred home-share websites such as Airbnb. When it comes to a hotel’s facilities, complimentary wifi topped


travellers’ priorities, with 96 per cent saying it was important. The study also found 50 per cent of travellers were paying for accommodation using their own money and claiming the expense, and 45 per cent using a company credit card. HRS UK managing director Jon West said this raised the issue of the cost to companies of processing expenses. Corporate use of virtual cards can take major costs out of the expense management process and if finance departments were more involved in buying accommodation, West said “they would be shocked to find” that inefficient payment and expense processes can add up to 50 per cent to the average cost of a hotel room. Another study published at the event showed that business


travel is a significant and direct factor in economic growth. Oxford Economics research found that if international business travel returns to pre-financial crisis levels in the next five years, it could increase UK trade by £6.5 billion, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by £1.6 billion. Dr Nishaal Gooroochurn, head of econometrics at Oxford Economics, told delegates that a 1 per cent change in business travel leads to a 0.05 per cent change in total trade, worth around £400 million for the UK. He said that international business travel volumes are on an “upward trajectory”, but were still down 17 per cent from 2006-2014.


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