As Biz Travel Surges, TMCs Focus Keenly on Driving Savings
by Lark Gould /LOS ANGELES – The big news at the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) Convention here this week is not just about Big Data but also about big spend.
GBTA released findings showing that global spending on business travel for 2014 is expected to hit a record $1.18 trillion – a nearly 7% jump over the previous year.
The spend for the U.S. will make up $292 billion of the total, according to the GBTA BTI™ Outlook – Annual Global Report & Forecast.
China leads the pack
China recorded the biggest leap in business travel spending – up from $32 billion in 2000 to $225 billion in 2013, an average 16% annually.
By contrast, growth in U.S. spending in business travel during the same period grew by a mere 1% annually.
Growth in spending is always good news for the travel industry – suppliers and distribution channels alike. But for travel management companies, more spend means more opportunities to drive major cost savings for corporate clients.
‘Phat’ data
The top TMCs are more invested than ever in capturing every element of a client company’s travel spend and funneling that information into single data banks where actions and behaviors can be crunched into any algorithm needed.
When companies are not doing this themselves, they are partnering with travel data companies that can do it for them.
“It’s all about ‘phat’ data,” said Patrick Andersen, president, Americas for Carlson Wagonlit Travel. “The smarter you can be in looking, the more nuggets you can uncover.”
Hunting for waste
“It’s like a treasure hunt,” said Victor Johnson, business development director for Atlas Travel, a global travel management company based in Milford, Mass. “You would be amazed at what you find when you start looking and then communicating those finds to the client company.
“We have started looking at, say, one simple thing – unused travel booked by employees who are no longer with the company. Just in that one thing we are saving our clients from lots and lots of potential wastage.
“Our systems send us the alerts – we can’t expect to get this info from HR. And yet this one thing can be entirely critical to meeting our clients’ goals.”
“There is no substitute for numbers and the tracking systems are just getting better and better.”