Company: Nextel Partners
Headquarters: Kirkland, Wash.
2003 U.S. Booked Air Volume: $3 million
Nextel Partners in January began centrally billing air through an American Express account to capture data for negotiations, which next year the company will work to secure collectively with an affiliate. The company's travel manager, Nancy Witt, said using its centrally billed account exclusively for airline bookings has helped crack down on leakage while maximizing compliance with preferred airline policy.
"Whether it's done on Travelport or whether they do it through me, it goes through the travel card," Witt said. "It just throws out another way to make sure they're not going to NWA.com and booking their travel, where we lose that volume. It's very helpful in keeping volume all in one spot and having real-time data. The travelers love it for obvious reasons and of course our accounting people love it."
Nextel centrally bills all of its air expenditures, but Witt said other travel purchases have not lent themselves to the payment option. "We have a couple of hotels where offices are located and we have a direct billing option for people," Witt said. "I don't push the direct billing concept because it's a bit difficult to manage with hotels. I don't want just anyone coming into a hotel, saying they're with Nextel Partners and finding that room on our bill."
Witt is confident the data from centrally billing air "will help airline negotiations," yet Nextel is beginning another approach for securing rates for car and hotel. Given Nextel Communications' 32 percent stake in Nextel Partners, the companies are beginning to work in tandem to secure rates, although the two companies have maintained autonomy with all components of their travel programs, from contracts to management.
"We have just started leveraging together for next year," Witt said. "Right now, it is only on hotel and car rental. We are not combining on airline contracts. However, the management is completely separate. I work with the Nextel Communications' travel manager and we combined our car and hotel spend so they can use our rates when they are in our territories and vice versa." While such practices have had varying degrees of success with vendors, Nextel Partners' bloodline to Nextel Communications should prove beneficial for securing better rates
(BTN, Oct. 6, 2003).When Nextel Partners was spun off from Nextel Communications in 1998, managed travel was furthest from mind. "We didn't have a full-time travel manager," said Witt. "With startups there's not enough travel to really warrant it. It wasn't until about two years ago that they decided they really needed a travel manager to get a grip on the whole thing." While in its infancy, Nextel Partners pushed its lightly managed travel program to Metropolitan Travel, but as the business and corporate travel volume grew there became more need for a proper program. "Prior to that, there was no travel manager," Witt said. "Everyone just called the agency."
Often it was then-Metropolitan agent Witt who answered the phone. "They came to me with the idea," Witt said. "The travel volume had grown substantially and they needed someone to focus on it. The idea was for me to come over as travel manager and use the agency as back up for booking."
At the time of inheriting Nextel Partners' largely unattended travel program, Witt said Metropolitan was being sold to Expedia, which was on the verge of introducing its corporate travel product. Although Nextel considered the online agency, Witt and the company went with self-booking, global distribution and fulfillment services from Cendant Corp.'s Travelport, sans agency.
Witt said that although Metropolitan Travel had introduced the Travelport booking tool to Nextel Partners by the time she joined in July of 2000, "it wasn't mandated and no one was really watching it. More than 90 percent was not through the tool. It was just sitting there."
Since then Witt has pushed the tool, bringing its adoption to 37 percent with a target of 40 percent by the end of the year. The tool has helped to cut transaction fees in half since its implementation, but Witt said her agent touch has helped fuel compliance and educate travelers. "If it's out of policy, I can void it and contact the traveler," she said. "That's where my agent experience helps me as a travel manager. I don't have to rely on someone else's word about what's true and wonder if somebody's feeding me a line."