New Self-Booking Wrinkles Push Policy Compliance

As compliance rates continue to climb at both large and small companies through the use of standard policy-enforcing capabilities of online booking tools, traditional and online travel management companies are looking to drive those rates even higher by developing creative and innovative tools that influence traveler behavior at the point of sale—in some cases, before a traveler even signs onto the booking tool.

"We can negotiate the best programs and the most competitive in the industry for clients on the air, hotel and car side, but if they're not effectively managed at the point of sale, they're not optimized, so it's almost a wasted effort," said DeAnne Dale, vice president of strategic account management and consulting services of Travelocity Business.

Dale and her team are in the process of developing a series of tools so managers can communicate policy with travelers via e-mail. "An example would be if Hilton was a client's preferred chain. We would send out a letter that would have a link for the traveler to sign up for their loyalty programs with information on whatever benefits come along with that," she said. "We're equipping managers with numerous tools to get the word out in more of a marketing campaign as to why the preferred suppliers are important and what the value is to the company."

Dale said she has seen clients produce "unbelievable" results by using marketing tools to illustrate the value of policy. "Instead of just sending out a message that says, 'Carrier A is now one of our preferred suppliers,' we actually quantify what the benefits are to the organization as a whole to utilize that carrier," she said.

This is the intent of smarter solutions aimed at increasing compliance: to stop an out-of-policy booking before it actually happens, rather than looking back after a traveler has booked a trip, said Harriet Washburn, integrated supply chain manager of global travel services at IBM. "Once somebody's confirmed a reservation, they may have already confirmed meeting arrangements or concluded other commitments that make it impractical to change the reservation," Washburn said, adding that IBM is currently exploring the development of such a tool.

Many travel managers rely on capabilities built into their online booking tools to help drive compliance rates and guide users to select preferred suppliers. New York-based JourneyCorp Travel Management has developed an automated pre-trip approval process that sends pending itinerary notifications to travelers and travel managers. The travel manager has the capability to approve or deny the trip, as well as change any segments within a trip to ensure it conforms to policy. The American Museum of Natural History, a JourneyCorp client, has been one of the travel management company's most successful cases in producing savings with the help of the pre-trip authorization tool.

"They are unique because they have a couple of people who do a lot of booking on behalf of other people who are also the authorizers, so it allows them to put in the budget codes and keep track of how they're spending their money on different projects," said Helen Enriquez, director of product development of JourneyCorp. "They use the tool in conjunction with the online booking tool that we provide for them, so they're probably at higher than 80 percent adoption."

James Westgarth, manager of traveler technology at Toulouse, France-based Airbus, is a client of online booking and expense firm KDS International and finds the visual aspect of the tool to be very important in enforcing policy. "We do show out of policy, but if users book an out-of-policy flight they are forced to provide a justification," Westgarth said. "In the itinerary, which is received by the traveler and the approver, it is clearly printed that this traveler is out of policy and the reason."

Westgarth, who manages a travel program with about †200 million in spend, admitted Airbus is not "100 percent strict" in enforcing policy, but added that since implementing the tool six months ago, the company has seen compliance rates as high as 80 percent. "It's a combination of everything—the visual factor on the screen, the reason coding, just the fact that it's going to be printed on the itinerary if you do go out of policy and reported on," he said. "Through the combination of these factors we do generate a high level of compliance and we're getting more control over our travel budget."

Tammy Troilo-Krings, CEO and leadership coach of Columbus, Ohio-based travel management company Travel Solutions, works with TRX's ResX online booking tool and believes flexibility is an important component to consider when choosing an online booking tool to enforce policy, to the point where she credited it with effecting preferred supplier arrangements for many of her clients. "That's probably one of the areas that have really started evolving," she said. "We set up the tool initially to identify preferred suppliers, but maybe not dictate that that's the supplier you need to take. Once they're able to demonstrate to management that this type of presentation and the self-service environment achieves cost savings, they're able to go into another phase of a little stronger recommendation of taking that preferred supplier."

The stronger policy and subsequent stronger compliance rates help in hotel contract negotiations, Troilo-Krings said. "Hotels are very interested in knowing how you are going to make this happen," she said. "If you have a hotel program in place, and you haven't been able to move marketshare, how are you going ensure that, because it's very much a seller's market in the hotel industry."

Through ResX, Travel Solutions also can put caps in place on hotel bookings in certain cities, so travelers cannot exceed a certain dollar amount for a room. If desired, that policy can be manipulated even further, so that preferred supplier displays are within the cap.

As policy-enforcing technologies available through online booking tools continue to evolve, Troilo-Krings cautioned travel managers to keep this in mind: "Even though there is a published policy within a corporation and even though it may be very well managed, when you start looking at an online environment there are decisions that need to be made about how to enforce it," she said. "You cannot take the policy enforcement practices of old and simply convert them to an online tool. There are deeper decisions to be made to have the impact that you want to have."