Profiles In Travel Management

Using ITMC Internationally
Company: Discovery Communications Inc.
Headquarters: Silver Spring, Md.
2005 U.S. Booked Air: $12 million

Becoming one of the first to have one agency and one online booking tool in the United States and the United Kingdom is what Yukari Sison, director of global travel services of Discovery Communications Inc., considers her biggest accomplishments last year. The achievement is yielding significant metrics for the media company, home to the Travel Channel, BBC America and others.

Six years after deploying GetThere's online booking tool in the United States, Sison is seeing an 80 percent adoption rate and 58 percent savings on her travel budget. In the United Kingdom—where Sison last December deployed the tool with the help of Travelocity Business—the company has witnessed an adoption rate of 76 percent and savings as high as 80 percent.

"The reason for that high savings in the U.K. is that we were paying total gross volume not just on air, but hotel, car rental and rail," Sison said. "It was incredible for me to see that, because we had been paying them without question, so when I brought Travelocity Business on board and I started my savings analysis, I had to do a double take. In fact, I asked one of our finance guys to take a look at the numbers, because it really was unbelievable for me."

In April, Discovery held a focus group in London to gauge employees' experiences with GetThere's tool. "Overall, they're very pleased with Travelocity Business and the online booking tool," Sison said. "In fact, they came to us with some enhancement ideas." Sison this month is prepping for a survey in both countries that focuses on traveler satisfaction with the GetThere tool and Travelocity Business telephonic services.

Initially, Discovery had very low adoption of the online booking tool, Sison said, "until 2003, when our CEO came to us and said, 'How can travel help us save money?' So we introduced the online tool, pulled out an ROI that we had designed a couple of years prior, dusted it off and said, 'Here you go.' She signed off on it immediately and within a couple of months we were doing a soft mandate. At the end of the year we were at 60 percent adoption." By 2004, senior management mandated use of the tool and Sison began holding quarterly meetings to make sure users understand GetThere's tool and any enhancements, which she still does.

More recently, Sison, who manages a 12-person staff, hired Travelocity Business consulting services to help Discovery manage its airline contracts and hotel program. "We have a very good airline program and it's pretty well mandated, but we're all over the board when it comes to hotels," she said. "We do a lot on our own, but with the hiring of Travelocity Business consulting services, they'll become more involved with our travel program."

Sison is pleased with the level of service that Travelocity Business provides on a multinational basis and plans to expand to Singapore in the next step of the program's development.

Tom Wilkinson, president of TRW Travel Consulting in Pennington, N.J., said the transatlantic reporting capability of Travelocity Business creates a new option for multinational buyers to consider. "It really does suggest there is new competition," he said. "Does it mean they can handle a large global account tomorrow? No, but they can handle one client and she is reporting success in managing travel on both sides of the Atlantic."