“We don’t pay that much attention to a traveller’s faith as to what a trip should bear. Does business travel deliver what it promises?”
Well, business travel should never let
us down on this front – because each trip is supposed be a very clear quest with a defined goal. Unlike a holiday, the destina- tion is never the outcome. The ultimate prize is signing that multi-million pound contract in Beijing or cementing that busi- ness relationship in Birmingham. “In the last 18 months we’ve had to
justify a lot more as to why we are trav- elling,” says my contact, who prefers to be remain anonymous, at the Ministry of Justice in London. “We cannot just book spontaneously. With more cost- cutting, each trip has to have a defined goal and outcome.” The consensus is that executives are happier with a trip – all things being
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
equal – if there is a very clear aim, which is then achieved while away. Just asking for face-to-face time with a UK branch office or a customer in Asia isn’t enough. And the less defined a trip is, the fewer
goals that are achieved, then the less sat- isfying it can be. This can lead to a greater propensity for the traveller to be irked by other factors – the late flight, the lack of ground transport on arrival or the poor room service. “The business traveller is one of the com-
pany’s most important assets and, as such, their wellbeing and mindset should be of considerable importance,” says Paul Wait, CEO of the Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC). “It is perhaps hard to have a corporate travel philosophy, but
certainly encouraging openness and dis- cussing concerns about a trip are crucial.” It doesn’t help that many procurement
and finance departments are now respon- sible for travel buying and policy forming these days. “To be honest there needs to be a fundamental shift away from these func- tions to commercial and HR,” says Wait. “We need to put the responsibil-
ity for business travel into the hands of those people accountable for delivering the company revenues, and have HR monitor and assist in the wellbeing of those people,” he adds. “This fundamental shift in decision-making moves the focus from cost, and inevitably cost-cutting, to investment and a return on human capital and output.”
BBT November/December 2016 79
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