Profile In Travel Management: Cox Travel Department Leverages Leisure Bookings
Company: Cox Enterprises
Headquarters: Atlanta
Annual Air Volume: $20-$30 million
The Cox Enterprises travel department's responsibilities go beyond the typical scope of corporate travel practices to include managing an in-house leisure travel and vacation service that brings the company additional volume to leverage with suppliers.
The Atlanta-based media conglomerate may not be alone in the practice, but certainly such travel management configurations are atypical.
While the growth of online booking adoption to 50 percent has enabled the company to trim some of its onsite staff, Cox's unconventional travel management configuration, which incorporates corporate travel, meetings and events, incentives and leisure travel, uses 10 agents furnished by Duluth, Ga.-based TMC Travel Inc. "We offer a concierge-level type service within our company, which is wanted and the need is met," said Cox director of travel and event management Jeff Messer.
Messer's department not only oversees the travel of 22,000 profiled corporate travelers, but also handles for its 83,000 employees vacations, small incentives, travel voucher and certificate giveaways and the company's preferred leisure online booking engine, World Choice Travel. Leisure bookings made online are separate from the company's $20 million to $30 million corporate travel air volume.
Cox garnered corporate travel savings through operation of its own onsite conference facility, which it installed more than two years ago. It has not built any demand management policies into facility use, but Messer said Cox has seen an uptick in usage as "people are being good corporate citizens and trying to watch the dollar."
Following the switch from GetThere to Cliqbook in 2005, the company has seen its adoption level increase without a mandate through communication initiatives, increased training and education. With all bookings, travelers receive a survey and the travel department follows up if further training is needed to help drive traffic online, where transaction fees are 30 percent less than offline bookings. Messer also uses a monthly traveler newsletter and communications through the online booking tool to raise employee awareness of online functionality.
"Everything we offer is service-oriented to make their lives easier," he said. "We can't tell them they have to do it."
With online booking adoption rising, the company has tuned into an ancillary travel spend area for more savings, harnessing its off-airport parking expenditure and linking with its travel management company's proprietary technology for a fully automated ticket exchange process. The integration of off-airport parking company Park 'N Fly into Cox's Cliqbook self-booking tool has provided travelers with an alternative to on-airport parking facilities. "It's been widely accepted here. It saves travelers a lot of time because they don't have to go somewhere else to book it or call an agent to book it," Messer said.
Though airport parking expenditures are a relatively small part of total travel spending, Messer said the company still saves thousands through its Park 'N Fly contract. The arrangement yields an average of 20 percent less per online reservation compared with a drive-up reservation, he said, and pre-paid reservations average 40 percent less than typical airport parking fees.
Cox also achieved efficiencies through the fusion of TMC Travel Inc.'s proprietary automated ticket change technology with the online booking tool. The marriage enables the full automation of the ticket exchange process and has generated "huge savings" by not having to pay for the manual labor. Now, 50 percent of the company's ticket exchanges are processed through Travel Inc.'s automated system.