I recently had an epiphany. It began this year with observations I gathered as I made my way through various business travel conferences, "think-tank" sessions and client meetings where I listened to industry and non-industry pundits and travel buyers both new to the scene and not-so-new. Then there is the travel-rag faucet of opinions that I faithfully read and follow. But it wasn't until just recently, at an event where I was invited to be keynote speaker, that my thoughts crystallized.
My speech was to be about new procurement strategies and my views on ancillary fees. In preparing for this engagement, I admittedly struggled with bringing together a strategic discussion around what I see as emerging buy strategies with how to negotiate the price of a pillow, a sandwich or a can of potato chips on an airplane. But it all came together for me with the presentation that another keynoter delivered just prior to introducing me. In her set up, she went through an anthology of what has happened in the travel industry since 1980.
As I listened to the chronology of events that she had put together (thinking, those were the good old days; yeah, I remember that; oh, yeah that too; wow, that was a disaster; yada, yada) it occurred to me when she reached 1995 that 1995 was the last year that anything truly new had been introduced in terms of mainstream procurement strategies. That was the year the airlines began eliminating standard point-of-sale commissions, which then ushered in the era of "partnership and transparency," when everyone in the corporate world--and their travel management companies--agreed to reveal all revenues and operating costs associated with doing business together.
While this was a necessary and progressive approach then, it was merely an inflection point in buying, and not the beginning of a New Testament for business travel management. This approach has become mainstream during the past 15 years in all segments of the travel industry, but at some point it all becomes a zero-sum game.
So let me put this out there for your consideration: Everything is visible now. Everyone's in the know. We are at a new inflection point. It's time to move on. Whatever were the wasteful practices embedded in travel management processes in 1995, they have all surfaced and either been managed or ignored as not being significant to the plot. To be frank, if we were any more transparent than we are today, we would be invisible. And when the day comes where we think that negotiating the price of a pillow on an airplane is a good idea, I'll probably move on to more progressive endeavors--like undertaking a study about how many car washes I should be entitled to in exchange for buying a year's worth of prepaid coupons.
[PULL_1]There is a rock band out of Seattle that has a huge following and an active social medium site. They recently polled their fans and asked where they should be thinking about holding concerts. This feedback became the basis of their concert tour program. Every one of their concerts is sold out, and the demand grows accordingly. Why is no one in travel innovating like this?
Here is something to wrap your mind around: Suppose you are a nationally recognized learning and development organization seeking a new approach to establishing your curriculum. Today you develop programs that your experts say are important, and you book venues in markets that have been faithful to you. What if you polled your audience and asked what they were interested in learning? You have their email addresses and, likely, their geographic vicinity. Why not build your curriculum model around the demand of your audience and have some travel search program calculate the best location for you to engage your learning? This is the type of environment that is enabled through social media.
The reason scenarios like this don't exist today is because we are stuck on what has been working since 1995. We are still searching for transparency and trying to control the margins on each other's collective efforts. We need to be over that.
I have many ideas like the one above rattling around in my head, and, in my new role as the Association of Corporate Travel Executives executive director, I will be vigilant in bringing forth new material for us to consider.
Let's break out the new stuff. It promises to be a lot more interesting.
Ron DiLeo, former owner of In The Black, is ACTE's new executive director.