UK MARKET: KEY FINDINGS
97% say business travel is important for success in
their job
81% say business travel takes them away from family
and friends
57% say they have a strict enforcement of company
business travel policy
55% find out less than a month before that they are
going on a trip
53% say their company does not have a clear policy
when it comes to business travel
39% UK business travellers who always book
in policy
26% don’t know of the presence of a business travel
policy or guidelines
send people the policy. Many travellers get email blindness; they get too many electronic communications. One more about travel policy and related issues can be one email too many,” she explains. “You can’t step back from human relationships. People need to be curious as to why there is a policy in the first place. “It is important that business travel-
lers ask questions. We do training and seminars the first time they are engaged with us; this is the best time to enlighten them. Travelling executives also need to be able to ask questions about how things work. Sometimes it can be daunting. The fact is everything in travel is evolving fast – travel policy, workplace elements and business travel itself,” she says. The study also suggests that beyond awareness programmes, additional
in one of the company’s clients, which displayed each office’s performance and compliance, although this, in turn, created a new set of issues. “These leader-boards were openly
displayed in each office globally and sparked up competition between the regions. If deploying this, it would have to be looked at carefully as the business mix, including air, hotel and rail, varies considerably between regions as does the online and offline booking limitations,” explains Knights. “What I mean by this is that for Spain,
for example, it would not be fair for them to compete against the UK in terms of overall online adoption beause Spanish travellers use a large amount of domestic rail, which has to be booked directly on the RENFE website.”
“There are challenges in incentivising and rewarding people for what they should be doing anyway”
holiday, paid time off and monetary bonuses could possibly be used as incen- tives. Certainly, targeted short campaigns aimed at driving compliance can work rather than ones that drag on for months. “There are also challenges in incentiv-
Source: GFK / American Express Global Business Travel
ising and rewarding people for what they should be doing anyway,” adds Marshall, while Amex GBT’s Hurst says: “Things that are measurable and easily defined should be used. If your goals and campaigns are too widespread, when it comes to compli- ance, it won’t be successful. “We have to be careful when it comes
to rewarding compliance with incentives. You could see those who travel will then want to travel more to earn more rewards. It can also create extensive HR issues sin- gling individuals out for rewards, since not everyone in a company travels – in some cases it is just the c-suite or top executives. Also, these kinds of schemes take them out of the hands of travel managers and into the hands of HR. Many companies are not keen on doing this.” Adam Knights, managing director of
ATPI UK, has seen softer approaches used, including leader-boards and scorecards
66 BBT May/June 2018
THE ROGUE MILLENNIAL Another element the survey highlighted is the rise of the rogue millennial traveller. According to the research, they are more likely to experience many of the challenges more acutely than your average older busi- ness traveller. They are also more likely to find a justification to book outside of policy. This is a growing cohort within the business community and one to monitor in the future. Remarkably, a study by IBM shows millennials prefer interacting with chatbots than real people, while research company Gartner has predicted that by 2020, 85 per cent of customer interactions will take place through this medium. “This demographic has never booked
using a telephone. They do it all online. Asking millennials to pick up a phone is alien to them,” explains Amex GBT’s Hurst. “It will be more important in the future for the industry to engage with this group. We will all need to roll out further tech solutions including chat functionality and mobile apps.” This survey certainly gives all of us plenty of food for thought.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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