The adage has long held that, with travel programs, smaller does not necessarily mean less complicated, but as small- and medium-sized companies begin to ramp up travel again in the coming months, they will be facing a host of complexities that could make operating without a managed program more difficult than ever.
For some, those complexities include still sorting out the challenges that arose in the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Cheryl Benjamin, former travel buyer for Dart Container Corp. who now is working as an independent consultant, said she recently spoke to a company that was part of a rapidly growing segment during the pandemic. It had no real managed travel or card program and was now trying to put everything together for both it and its recent acquisitions.
"I can't imagine some of these smaller programs that didn't have a managed program when Covid hit, even just trying to determine the unused tickets, which could be hundreds of thousands in lost dollars," she said. "Companies without a corporate card program might not have the means to pull this data and even know what spend they had."
Staying on Top of Restrictions
Sorting out unused tickets, however, is no longer "the most frequent call" from SME clients, TripActions chief revenue officer Carlos Delatorre said. One of the key challenges now, he said, is keeping up with the ever-changing restrictions related to Covid-19 around the world in real time. Already there have been quick changes in restrictions or quarantine requirements and the bursting of travel "bubbles" that have emerged, meaning business travelers will need to quickly adapt in the months ahead.
As such, having access to the right technology will be critical as travel returns, Benjamin said.
"The time that we're in right now, email is never an effective way to communicate things that high-priority," she said. "If there's another surge or a different variant, what are those hotspots? How do you keep on top of that?"
Peter Gianusso, who recently joined Flight Centre Travel Group as its chief technology officer, said that currently is the biggest request from FCM's SME clients as well. FCM has partnered with travel documentation data provider Sherpa, which pulls data from more than 2,000 sources, and have developed a co-branded website to keep corporate teams informed of rules and restrictions around the world.
"It's really challenging, from a technology point of view, to adapt to that," Gianusso said. "We're delivering that information to our consultants, along with the travel managers."
Not having that information could be costly for SME travel programs, which already likely have their budgets stretched, Benjamin said. If an employee travels to a country not understanding the quarantine requirements, for example, the company could find itself on the hook for a lengthy, costly hotel stay. Or, a traveler could travel to country where travel is permitted but then find out upon return the testing required to re-enter the United States or another country is not available.
Suzanne Boyan, meetings and travel manager for global professional services firm ZS, said her company opened up travel at the beginning of June. As the pandemic proved to be a "perfect time to make changes and hit a giant reset button," the team rolled out the Zeno booking and expense tool over the past year, and they first concentrated on training the administrative assistants to senior leaders, who would be the first ones traveling.
While ZS has been saying that domestic travel is "fully open," given the challenge of keeping up with the changing situation globally, international travel still requires a "high-touch" approach handled by the travel team.
"We have a team of two travel employees helping out with those international [requests]," Boyan said. "We still have travel shut down in Europe and Asia/Pacific because things there are so volatile. We're waiting until there's a little bit more consistency."
That has not translated into instituting a pre-trip approval process, however. "I stand by the fact that it's a waste of time and encourages people to book outside of their program," she said.
Having the right technology tool can enable SMEs to move away from pre-trip approvals even in the face of this volatility, TripActions' Delatorre said. Being able to track Covid-19 infection rates, for example, could allow a company automatically to turn off travel to an area when the infection levels there go above what a company determines to be an acceptable rate, he said.
"It's more control, because policies are dynamic, and you can base it on variables in real time," Delatorre said. "Nobody has to do anything or change anything; the policy is just updated."
Evolving Data Needs
Of course, SMEs will need stronger controls beyond the bookings in a post-Covid-19 world. Boyan said the one piece of technology she would not want to operate without is some sort of data consolidation dashboard.
If you don't have a mechanism to pull in all of your data, you'll spend too much time trying to figure out who booked in or out of your program, but most importantly, trying to get people back to safety." she said.
The largest travel management companies are recognizing these needs as well. American Express Global Business Travel, for example, made a big play toward the SME market earlier this year with an agreement to acquire Egencia, Expedia Group's corporate travel arm which has done heavy business with SME accounts. The deal, in which Egencia will continue to operate as a separate brand under the GBT umbrella, is expected to close this year.
In the meantime, Amex GBT last month also announced that it was expanding its SME-focused expense and purchasing management platform Neo1, launched last year in the United Kingdom, to the United States. The platform includes budgeting, purchasing and expense management functions and connections to GBT's booking tool and travel support services.
Terri Buscemi, Amex GBT's VP of business development, concurred with Boyan that a dashboard tool will be critical for SME travel programs, not just for being able to find travelers but to make decisions and access necessary data. Such a tool, for example, could help companies determine proper booking windows as travel returns or provide data around environmental impact of travel as sustainability takes a higher priority for many companies, she said.
Overcoming Service Struggles
Access to service on the road, especially during travel disruptions, also will be of heightened importance as travel returns. Airlines, for instance, have been reporting wait times of several hours on customer service calls. While they are making some changes to cut down on call volumes—Delta Air Lines, for example, has temporarily enabled changes for Basic Economy tickets and added self-service capabilities in its app for same-day standby and flight changes—those appear likely to persist as airlines deal with growing demand and work to recover to pre-Covid-19 staffing levels.
Although TMCs will have their own ongoing staffing recovery as demand returns, TripActions' Delatorre said his company largely has been able to maintain response levels. Its ability to maintain a response rate of a minute or less has typically hovered in the mid-90-percent range, and while it dropped to around 80 percent at its lowest level, it has since recovered to above 90 percent, he said.
Hotels also could be shorter-staffed, and car rental availability remains a big challenge, Benjamin said. At the same time, many SMEs will be dealing with a less centralized workforce, with more employees either permanently working remotely or in a hybrid workplace arrangement.
"We're seeing, among SME customers, low tolerance for an unmanaged program," Buscemi said. "They are looking for simplification and an end-to-end technology backed by people who can support in any time of crisis."
Many of these complexities will be faced by larger travel programs as well, but most SME travel buyers will have additional challenges of smaller staffs and tighter budgets in an organization where they likely already had other roles outside of travel management. For those buyers, that can present an advantage to broaden their collaboration across their organizations, such as with the "chief wellness officer" roles that many organizations have added in response to the pandemic. Ultimately, that could result in more support for managed travel, according to Benjamin.
"Smaller organizations are going to struggle with this, and this is where a travel manager can use it to their advantage and elevate their position within the company," she said. "There are only so many hours in a day, so how do you work smarter? That comes back to the technology and tools and working with a more cross-functional team than it ever has been before."