The softening of demand that many business travel industry suppliers have been reporting in the past few months is in evidence in this annual effort to provide the business travel industry with meaningful benchmarks.
Business Travel News, in its 21st annual Corporate Travel 100 issue, which offers a picture of previous year and current developments within the travel programs of the largest business travel spenders, shows only a slight increase in overall spending for 2007, from $10.8 billion in 2006 to $11.2 billion.
The rankings here are based on air tickets bought in the United States going to anywhere. The overwhelming majority of companies on this list provided that information, as well as other details about preferred vendors, program accomplishments and goals and policy changes, through phone interviews and questionnaire responses. For companies that did not participate,
BTN used many industry sources and published reports and gave companies the opportunity to improve the accuracy of listings in advance of publication
BTN in this issue also recognizes the buyers who have done the most in the past year to elevate specific travel management practices. This year,
BTN editors highlighted buyer efforts to advance social networking, implement green travel strategy, automate pre-trip authorizations and automate hotel RFPs and rate auditing.
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2008 Best Practitioner: A.T. Kearney's Margaret HansenWhen global consulting firm A.T. Kearney last year pledged carbon neutrality by the end of 2009, travel quickly became the focal point. At the behest of senior management, the firm's travel department—working with a broad coalition of divisional leaders, consultants and scientists—moved to measure and then offset carbon emissions derived from corporate travel, building a sustainability program from scratch and setting standards for carbon reporting.
2008 Best Practitioner: Cisco Systems' Susan LichtensteinThe adoption of Web 2.0 technology into its managed corporate travel program has eased the massive change management process for 66,000 employees, help to significantly shrink internal travel and provided Cisco Systems' travel and meetings team a real-time automated conduit from its customers—the Cisco traveler population.
2008 Best Practitioner: Universal Music Group's Pamela WitherspoonUniversal Music Group director of travel services Pamela Witherspoon combined homegrown electronic travel authorization technology with global distribution data to bring savings in an industry that, because of the nature of its travel programs, cannot always rely on traditional travel management best practices.
Best Practitioners Roundtable DiscussionBTN invited the Best Practitioners and Northrop Grumman corporate director of travel, meetings & special events planning Janice Chang, who
BTN named
2008 Travel Manager of the Year for creating a tool that automates the RFP and hotel auditing process, to meet in a room provided by the National Business Travel Association before the start of their convention in late July in Los Angeles.