Biz Travel Managers: Get Involved with Social Media

Getting actively involved in social media isn’t an option any longer for corporate travel managers.

If the travel department hasn’t led the way in social media inside the corporate firewall, somebody else has already started the party. It could be the security department, it could be IT, it could be travelers themselves. But whoever got the electronic conversation started, you can bet they’re talking about travel.

“I recently complained internally about the hideous corporate hotel I had to stay at, which was completely unacceptable,” said Miriam Moscovici, who works in strategic marketing and technology planning with BCD Travel.

“Within two hours, five colleagues had replied to my post,” she told Travel Market Report. “Three of them agreed with me and gave additional examples of how the hotel is not acceptable for the program. Two others recommended other preferred hotels that were within three blocks of the awful one that I should stay at the next time. That type of collaborative activity, that streaming of information about travel management, that all happens within a social enterprise. Your company either has one or it will. That is the modern way of doing business.”

Most travel managers recognize the need to use and to manage social media within the travel program, Moscovici said. What many aren’t sure about is how to start. She talked about first steps with Travel Market Report business travel editor Fred Gebhart.

Where do travel mangers get started?
Moscovici: The first place you start is finding the group in your company that controls internal communications. Likely they are either currently, or planning to, implement some sort of social enterprise tool within the company or adding some sort of social enterprise functionality to an existing tool. The people who handle your recruiting, your HR, your corporate communications, your knowledge management, are starting to look at the kind of tools that employees use to communicate with one another.

What kinds of things are these folks working on?
Moscovici: They are creating a new communication mechanism, a new collaboration mechanism, for employees. The corporate travel program needs to carve their space within that space. That is where travelers are most likely to give feedback on the program, share experiences, share best practices. It could be a great way for the travel program to communicate with their travelers by way of a Twitter-ish (www.Twitter.com) type program within the corporate enterprise. That’s where travelers can share any type of rating or review or collaboration.

Find out what your corporate plans are in that area. This might simply be allowing discussion boards on the corporate intranet site. This might be a more sophisticated social enterprise platform like CubeTree (www.cubetree.com) or Chatter (www.salesforce.com/chatter/) or Yammer (www.yammer.com). There are a variety of tools that reside within the corporate firewall. The travel manager has to advocate on behalf of the traveler.

Where are travel managers getting their information about social media?
Moscovici: They are being educated by their traveler population and by their leadership. The good news is that top-level decision makers are exactly the ones who have these types of lifestyles that travel managers and companies have to accommodate. These corporate leaders are the ones who have a full home life going on and they have this complex work life that is full of travel. They appreciate the blending and the collaboration between the pieces of their life.

That is an absolute reality. It pushes that understanding down to the travel manager level at the same time travelers are pushing it up to travel managers. Suppliers also are bringing these types of tools to the table. There aren’t very many travel managers who don’t have a pretty good understanding of the impact of social media and mobile on their programs.

How does the travel manager get involved so they can have in impact?
Moscovici: Travel managers want a traditional corporate angle, which is that somebody will tell them what is the best thing in the world to use. What we’re finding is that one size does not fit all travelers. That’s one of the things travel managers are coming to grips with.

We need to find ways for the travel manager to advocate on behalf of the traveler within their internal departments like security or data privacy or procurement. The travel manager needs to sit at the table with the people who procure mobile devices for the company. The people who are making the decisions on mobile devices have to be aware of how people are really using their mobile device. The people making the decision have to get the right data plan so travelers can use their iPhone app to have the advantage over the pedestrian sitting there with their mobile app.

Can the corporate social enterprise be controlled the same way traditional travel policy can be controlled, or does the conversation move at the collective whim of travelers?
Moscovici: There is an element of guiding, a bit of control, a moderating type of effect. But the real definition of social enterprise is people building the infrastructure that they need. Sure, you can censor, but do you really want to? You want to build an environment where people are candid in their response and immediate in their sharing of their experience. Not only can that help you with your supplier negotiations, it can help your travelers make the most of your preferred hotel program. When something goes subpar and isn’t up to the expectations set in your negotiations, you know about it immediately. Travelers can solve each others problems, problems that you didn’t even know that they had. You can demonstrate your willingness to take them seriously.

Are there still problems with corporate security and apps on company phones?
Moscovici: It is very regional. I was just in Europe last week and they have many more locked down phones than we do. Absolutely corporations are still locking phones. That is causing two things to happen. It is causing users to jailbreak if they know how, which is breaking into the operating system and loading their own stuff anyway, and it is causing users to double up on phones. I see more and more travelers using their corporate Blackberry and then buying a personal iPhone.

Are they charging that iPhone back to the company?
Moscovici: Corporate travel managers are discovering a couple of new categories in T&E. It’s like when we asked the question ten years ago “are we going to reimburse people for high speed Internet?” Now we think that’s a funny question.

Now travel managers are thinking about bearing the expense of smart phones that are essentially mini computers that are enabling our travelers around the world. Are we going to reimburse them or give them an annual app allowance? Are we going to allow them to customize their phones to meet their individual needs? There are all sorts of new questions and new categories of T&E.

How flexible should travel managers be to help travelers be more productive?
Moscovici: The reality is that their technology teams and their security teams are going to dictate what is allowable and what is possible. That is the bottom line. They need to work with those guys. Ultimately, the security of the corporate asset, the phone you hold in your hand, and the data that is held within that asset, is a much bigger deal than any of these apps. They will ultimately restrict use in some way.

Travel managers need to keep the conversation going. They need to discover what their travelers are using and how they are solving these problems they are having on the road, how they are finding new tools, and they need to be able to support them.

Coming up next: Miriam’s must-have social media travel tools and apps for business travel sellers and corporate travel managers.