CREATIVE THINKING
WORDLY INTERPRETS
But – how to get to Kangiqsualujjuaq, the first filming location, exactly? Easy – Corpo- rate Traveller pulled the right strings (and reins) so that the crew and their bags were able to travel by Ski-Doo snowmobiles and husky sleds. Most of the bags went back to Kuujjuaq
Airport the same way and a chartered cargo aircraft flew them to Nain airport, hundreds of miles south. Meanwhile, the crew and the remaining kit travelled on Ski-Doo and husky sleds to Nain, the second filming location. Once filming was complete, the crew and bags were flown from Nain to Montreal and on to the next location in Indonesia.
REVERSE THINKING Historically, travel managers have com- plained that by rummaging around on the internet, travellers think they can find lower fares than appear in their booking tool, without considering the loss of MI and poten- tially breaking their company’s commitment to an agreed spend, etc. Organisations have generally steered employees in the direction of flexible rates because that’s cheaper than paying to change inflexible ones. Business waste management company Biffa, based in High Wycombe, stood the logic of this on its head. Noticing that around 50 per cent of Biffa’s travellers were not chang- ing their hotel bookings at the last minute, group procurement category manager Richard Childs took an alternative route: “We could already change hotel bookings up to 24 hours in advance but by introducing inflexible fares into the booking tool, we could save £15 a night, on average,” he says. Because travellers (around 800) book their
own travel and fares are taken out of their department’s budget, they had an incentive to reduce accommodation costs. “We intro- duced it more than six months ago and we have already saved £30,000,” he says. The company also has suppliers with whom it has reciprocal business. Hotel group Village approached Biffa two years ago hoping to join the company’s travel pro- gramme. At the time that was not possible, but Childs suggested that when Village’s waste contract was coming up for renewal, there might be an opportunity to do recipro- cal business. Now, Biffa’s business in Village properties has grown from a few nights to a few hundred.
buyingbusinesstravel.com
SPEECH INTO UP TO 15 LANGUAGES; THE LISTENER SELECTS THEIR LANGUAGE AND RECEIVES THE TEXT AND AUDIO OF THE SPEECH IN REAL TIME
MOBILE APP-TITUDE
Although software as a service (SaaS) is well established as a means of providing expense management tools, less familiar to most travel managers is mobility as a service (MaaS), looking at all types of transportation – company cars, commuting and business travel – as one idea. To that end, Fleetondemand has launched
Mobilleo, which allows buyers and travellers to access all forms of transport in one app, with one payment and one ticket. It em- braces car rental companies, trains, flights, ride-hailing, plus scooter and bike schemes, and hotels. Mobilleo can be used for local travel, do- mestic or international and regardless, users can book their travel in one place and pay by credit/debit card, PayPal or credit account. And the app can be predicated on company policy, including turning some features/types of travel off, setting budgets and embedding of preferred suppliers and negotiated rates. Global digital marketing agency DAC uses
Mobilleo for travel out of two offices in the UK, and hopes to extend that to the rest of Europe next year. Office manager Hayley Raeper coordinates travel for the UK and has been using the app for seven months as the main operator.
“It is very quick and easy to navigate, and everything is presented in a standard layout and in one place,” she says. “I can set budgets, pull reports for the end of the month and get separate invoicing for different offices. I was using Google and comparison sites before, and it does all that for you; it saves me so much time.”
FARES IN FOCUS Focus Travel Partnership has devised a tool to ensure clients always get the best available
2020 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 77
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