“The hotel-client relationship has always been very one-sided, with hotels having immense power to change their rates”
savings are flagged up to Business Travel Direct, which can then book the cheaper hotel rate or allow the client to make the decision themselves at the click of a button. Julie Oliver, Business Travel Direct’s managing director, says: “It has truly been an unequivocal success. Not only are we finding savings on 36 per cent of hotels for our clients, but what really interests us is having access to a whole area of new data that can be analysed and reconfigured to find greater savings for our customers.” She adds: “The hotel-client relationship has always been very one-sided, with hotels having immense power to change their rates. Technology like Tripbam is a real game-changer as it monitors room rates to ensure hotels are honouring their negoti- ated rates with customers and offering the lowest available rate. It’s accountability like we’ve never seen it before, and it has huge potential for benchmarking, compliance, and data analysis for organisations with big hotel spend.”
But HRS’s West warns that sites such as
Tripbam could prove to be counter-produc- tive in the long run. He says: “These sites will simply drive the behaviour in hotels to deliver yield management so that the last available rooms are sold last-minute at the highest price. This creates a bad feeling between corporates and hotels as it forces prices to become more unpredictable with room rates varying widely depending on when the booking was made and by whom.” Meanwhile, Rocketrip says that it can reduce travel spending by up to 30 per cent per employee through the use of its platform which analyses market data to set a real-time ‘budget to beat’ for each trip. If the traveller spends less than this budget, they get to keep half of the saving they make. The tech company says that this encourages travellers to “spend company money as care- fully as their own” by considering cheaper options such as flying in economy, booking Airbnb accommodation or staying with a friend (see Case Study, p84).
TRAVEL MANAGEMENT 3.0
There has been much talk in recent months about the advent of Travel Management 3.0, which is the concept of the traveller being firmly in control of their individual travel plans and choices – primarily through the use of mobile technology. This future includes an enhanced booking experience, mobile devices that act as ‘virtual travel as- sistants’ and the use of virtual payments. Elements of this type of freedom for busi-
ness travellers already exist – there has been a growth in innovations such as travellers being able to bid for cabin upgrades, a process now widely available across many airlines, including Virgin Atlantic, Aer Lingus, Etihad, KLM and Lufthansa. “Bidding for airline upgrades has been avail- able for some time now and the more seasoned travellers have incorporated it into their best practice,” says Amex’s Haxne. “But there are policy questions in terms of reimbursement of upgrades, which in most cases aren’t allowed in T&E [travel and expense] policies.”
Virtual collaboration
IT MAY SEEM COUNTER-INTUITIVE for a TMC to promote a policy of trying to reduce the number of clients’ business trips, but this is one of the tenets of the ‘total virtual collaboration’ concept being promoted by BCD Travel, alongside its consultancy firm Advito and IT provider Cisco. This involves the integration of the meetings and travel programmes, which should allow companies to work out whether a physical or ‘virtual’ meeting is the best option. If it’s the latter, through video- or audio-conferencing, then there is no need for the participants to travel.
April Bridgeman, managing
director of Advito, explains: “Integrating virtual collaboration
82 BBT September/October 2016
form of video-conferencing and/or telepresence.
technology into a travel programme allows businesses to focus on travel that contributes to the bottom line. If a trip isn’t going to generate business or revenue, there’s an opportunity to conduct that business through virtual collaboration technology.”
A major reason why virtual collaboration could be set to take off is the improvement in the quality and reliability of virtual conferencing. Firms have also already invested in this type of technology – Advito says 81 per cent of companies offer access to some
The budget spent using this technology should also come down – Cisco is forecasting that the costs of virtual collaboration tools will halve every 18 months over the next few years. According to Advito, integrating travel and meetings should result in a reduction in travel spending, increased employee satisfaction and higher levels of productivity by cutting out unnecessary business journeys.
Read BCD Travel’s Chris Crowley’s Guest Column on virtual collaboration in Buying Business Travel, issue 81, p89
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132
