TRAVELLER MANAGEMENT BY MARTIN FERGUSON
OFF THE RAILS
A business travel consultant with a background in airlines, hotel and programme management
I WAS ATTENDING A MEETING of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives in Brussels on a Friday afternoon, when I received a call to say my daughter had been involved in an accident at school. She had been struck on the head by a hockey stick, and was being rushed to hospital in an attempt to save her eye. I had to get home as soon as possible. I jumped in a taxi and headed for the Eurostar. It was chaos at the
station. A fire had forced operators to close the tunnel. There was nothing anyone there could do to help. I was travelling in- dependently, and so had not booked through a TMC. How-
ever, having been in the
industry for many
years, I called a TMC contact and asked for help. There were no flights out of Brussels.
EDUCATED, UP TO A POINT… A travel manager in the public education sector
THREE ACADEMICS TOOK A GROUP OF STUDENTS to the US. They had the trip pre-approved, but did not book through the approved channel. Using personal credit cards they booked a multilayered trip to the tune of £8,000. Soon after, we re- ceived an expense claim for their outlay, though it was broken into the three amounts incurred by each
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individual – and the amounts were all different. The tour company had not provided an adequate breakdown of the itinerary, so the exact price of the flights, accommodation and tours was unknown. After three face-to-face meet- ings and four calls with the tour company we were still no closer to resolving the matter. Meanwhile, my team was being put under pressure by a department head to quickly reimburse the youngest of the academics, who could not afford to be out-of-pocket at the end of the month. Their excuse for booking out of policy
was that they’d found a “really good deal”. It turned out it was no better than could have been obtained through the official
channels. They were also under the im- pression it would take too long to book through the approved process.
The moral: I learned that my methods of communication and key messages were not always reaching travellers. In addition, it seemed that more clarity had to be brought to the policy We refreshed our communications plan and took it to the dean of the university to reinforce the value of our department. We requested he attend some of our meetings to ensure key messages were disseminated. We are currently working on a social media group and looking at better ways to use our intranet.
BBT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015 81
TMCs were busy trying to re-accommodate the stranded Eurostar passengers. The agent arranged for a car to pick me up and take me to Antwerp where a VLM flight to London City was departing in 40 minutes. We arrived five minutes after the scheduled departure time. I was distraught as I thought I was not going to make it back to the UK to be with my daughter. Just then, someone came running from the terminal to say the agent had been on the phone and that the flight had been held for me. In the end, we touched down only 20 minutes after the Eurostar would have arrived in London. I was soon reunited with my daughter, who was thankfully on her way to making a complete recovery.
The moral: I was lucky to have been able to call on a contact for help. But if a company has a managed travel policy and programme, the value of the TMC to help in times of crisis should never be underestimated.
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