A Shift in the Approach to Corporate Travel Management
by Michele McDonald /As travel becomes more complex, are corporate travelers getting the support they want and need from their employers and their travel management companies?
That question was asked of panelists at the CAPA Americas Aviation Summit in Henderson, Nev. The answers varied.
Not yet, David LeCompte, CEO of Short’s Travel Management, said.
“I don’t think we’re focusing on the traveler yet,” LeCompte said. “I still see more about policy.” But if travelers start to get frustrated, “there’s going to be a wakeup call.”
Rita Visser, global travel procurement officer, executive travel services, at Oracle, said some progress has been made.
“We used to just care about savings,” she said. “We honestly didn’t care what travelers wanted. We said, ‘Here’s what you’ll do and here’s how you’ll do it.’”
The demise of one-size-fits-all programs
But times have changed, Visser said. Now we ask our travelers, what part of our process is painful, and what is painful about the travel process. Then we go to our suppliers and say, ‘Here is a pain point. What can we do about it?’”
The one-size-fits-all corporate travel program also is becoming a thing of the past, the panelists said.
Rather than imposing rigid rules, “We put a box around things and say, ‘Here are some limitations we’d like you to live within,’” Visser said.
Le Compte said that some corporations that previously refused to reimburse travelers for inflight wi-fi are now taking a more common-sense approach.
“We used to say all travelers are created equal,” he said. But corporations are making more allowances when wi-fi can increase productivity, he said.
The importance of low-cost carriers
TSA’s Pre-Check program is another item that costs money but could save a lot over the long-term, according to Visser.
“Think of all of the laptops that don’t have to come out of a bag,” she said. Every laptop that is pulled out risks loss or damage.
In designing a travel program, a corporation may not take into account the growing importance of low-cost carriers, particularly in Europe and Asia.
“Ten to 15 years ago, we never would have guessed that Ryanair would care about corporate travelers,” Ralph Kaiser, of UATP, said. Now, both Ryanair and EasyJet participate in GDSs in order to gain access to the corporate market.
They also can offer the convenience of point-to-point service on short-haul flights. Many travelers are willing to forgo the frills in order to take a nonstop flight between European cities, Kaiser said.
‘Trust’—something new
Visser noted that two-thirds of air travel in Asia is on LCCs, and “there are corporate programs that are not addressing this. I’m not going to have someone connect on China Southern just because it fits into my program. All the poor guy wants to do is his job.”
LeCompte said only 1.5% of his air transactions are on LCCs. But he offered another interesting statistic: The average ticket price on LCCs was 45% of the average price on legacy carriers.
Perhaps the most significant shift in travel management is the introduction of an element of trust.
“We expect our travelers to make good corporate decisions,” Visser said.
Maria Chevalier, global vice president of corporate incubation at Travelport, agreed.
“I think Nordstrom said it best: ‘We make decisions based on the 99% that do the right thing. Corporate America makes rules based on the 1% who don’t.’”