Woodside Creates Group To Promote Fair Air Practices
<B> Woodside Creates Group To Promote Fair Air Practices</B>
By Sarah Welt
<I>Las Vegas</I> - At Woodside Travel Trust's annual corporate symposium in glitzy Las Vegas, president and CEO Ivan Michael Schaeffer announced an initiative to promote dialogue about anti-competitive practices by the airlines, and hosted a panel of corporate travel buyers who spoke about their efforts to consolidate, automate and globalize.
Schaeffer announced the travel agency network's creation of the Coalition for Fair Air Travel, with the goal of "fostering reasonable dialogue on airline competition" because of growing concern that the benefits of deregulation have never been truly realized.
"We feel the trend is toward consolidation and concentration," said Woodside spokesman Ethan Simon, and before things go too far, "we want dialogue and an open forum with the airlines."
The group's first meeting is scheduled for June 4 in Washington, D.C. Attorney Edward Faberman is acting as Woodside's chief counsel for the lobbying effort and an advisor to CFAT, as well as a point of contact for interested parties.
While Woodside is the only committed participant at this point, Simon said that a number of organizations expressed interest following the Las Vegas meeting.
The announcement of CFAT came on the heels of a session by Schaeffer on why the global economy needs fair airline competition. In the session, Schaeffer admonished attendees to encourage their Senators to help enact legislation to encourage competition and to keep the airline industry deregulated.
Schaeffer also at the annual meeting outlined Woodside's growth strategy, and noted the addition of two new members who joined in the past few weeks: BTA Business Travel AG, of Steinhausen, Switzerland, and Travel Incorporated of Duluth, Georgia.
Travel Managers Speak
The conference also offered educational breakout sessions. One session, called "Benefits and Myths of Travel Purchasing Consolidation," featured a panel of corporate travel buyers that included Kay Rocheleau of Hutchinson Technology, based in Hutchinson, Minn., Greg Griffith of Great Lakes Chemical, West Lafayette, Ind., Becky Widlak from Yakaki North America Inc., Canton, Mich., and moderator Robert Langsfeld, of Langsfeld, Fazio & Associates, Incline Village, Nev.
Two out of the three panelists are implementing travel technology. Widlak said her company plans to begin a pilot of Total Travel Management's proprietary booking product, Co-Pilot II, by July 1.
Rocheleau--whose company, a leading supplier of components for computer disk drives, has a rent-a-plate with air sales of $3.5 million--said she looked at self-booking two years ago but "decided to put our resources first into the automated expense reporting process, because we felt the return on our investment would be greater." To that end, Hutchinson built its own automated expense reporting product in Lotus Notes. The company now plans to select an automated booking tool in the next year or two.
But Griffith, who heads travel purchasing for a manufacturer of specialty chemicals with a $4 million annual total travel and entertainment spend, said he is not interested at all. His most frequent travelers consider themselves travel experts when they have easy access to information, he said.
When it comes to travel policy, though, Griffith's company has taken a strong stand. The company has a single policy for the United States, and internationally, works through Travel and Transport. "We put in our policy that if travelers don't comply, they don't get reimbursed," Griffith said.
The biggest deterrent to compliance at Great Lakes, he noted, are senior executives who exempt certain key employees from travel policy. Even with 7,000 employees in the company, word quickly gets around and undermines the program, "and travel coordinators have to bear the brunt of that."
Hutchinson, meanwhile, has a single global policy as well as additional country-specific ones.
The company is moving to the use of technology to remove cost from the process: it mandates that travelers use the preferred travel agency to book all trips, but agents no longer accept telephone calls from travelers--everyone must communicate via e-mail. And 95 percent of the company's tickets now are issued electronically.
"The agents are our employees, they know what policy says and they won't let anyone book outside policy," Rocheleau said. If travelers try to book outside of policy, their supervisors are notified. But consolidating with one agency has not been possible on a global scale to date.
Griffith said that Great Lakes chemical uses a single travel agency in the United States and affiliate members in Europe. "We have agency deals in the U.K., one in Switzerland and one in Belgium," he said.
Hutchinson Technology, meanwhile, completed its domestic consolidation eight years ago, and attempted a global consolidation in 1996, but found "that what we wanted wasn't out there," Rocheleau said. Instead, it chose to go with different agencies in the United States, Europe and Asia. One problem Rocheleau faced was that the global franchises she dealt with wanted to charge fees for data and reports.
"I was not prepared for independent franchises not cooperating," she said. Looking back, she added, "One thing I would do differently is I would ensure the parent company brought in franchise people as part of negotiations."
Widlak said her corporation has not yet gone with an international consolidation, however, "our domestic program has been consolidated for four years now." She has seen a lot of benefits to consolidation--most having to do with policy compliance, she said.