<B>Benchmarks Head Webward</B>
By Cheryl Rosen
TravelManagement.com, a two-year-old company that has specialized in travel industry job placement services, is changing gears with its debut of an online benchmarking service for corporate travel buyers. Called TravelStat, the system will be available in April, and premier at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Dallas.
Like real-world benchmarking groups, TravelStat depends on travel managers joining up by entering details of their travel programs into a database--in this case, on the system's site, www.travelstat.com. Customers then can produce reports that aggregate the data of all the participating companies, or break the data down by industry, company air volume or geographical location to produce a benchmark for banking institutions with air volumes under $10 million based in Virginia, for example. To maintain the confidentiality of each participant, the system will not reveal the average price any individual company pays.
The Web-based system requires only a 4.0+ version of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator and no additional software. Reports from the system can be exported into word processing or spreadsheet applications like Word or Excel.
Pricing will be based on an annual subscription that runs in two tiers: Corporate travel buyers, or "data contributors," will get 12 months or 50 user sessions for $795, said Charles Brossman, TravelManagement.com president, while non-data contributors (i.e., suppliers) pay $995 for 12 months or 25 user sessions.
To keep the data current, data contributors will have to resubmit their numbers every six months. If they fail to do so, the system will deny them entry and freeze their data in the database, so that it is not included in future benchmarks.
The benchmarking will include data on airline, car rental and hotel programs; financial statistics and global travel statistics; expense management and meetings management; travel agency costs and productivity; technology; travel policy; and travel manager best practices. Each area will include costs as well as contract best practices, plus open-ended questions like, "What do you think about this?"
A month before its April launch, TravelStat is "already in negotiations with several large industry names, including travel agencies and technology providers, to set up distributor-type relationships," Brossman said. Travel agencies that sell the product to corporate customers will be able to track their own customers in an individualized benchmarking database.
To help achieve a significant base of data for the system as it launches, Brossman is offering a 90-day free trial of the system to travel buyers willing to enter their data. A sneak peek of the system now is available on the Web.
The system has been beta tested by a number of corporations over the past two years, and their input has caused "tremendous change," Brossman said. "It's a completely different application." In addition to cosmetic improvements, it now offers more benchmarks and also allows agencies to add additional ones--such as agency customer service ratings--on the fly.
"We anticipate making a very big impact," Brossman said.
Formed in 1998 by Brossman and Steven Falk, both former agency executives, TravelManagement.com first moved into the Internet space with Travelsearch, a travel industry search engine. Even as it debuts TravelStat, it also is working on "interactive RFPs--integrating artificial intelligence technology into the process to drastically reduce the processing time for both the supplier and the purchaser." Brossman declined further comment on that product or its expected release date.