Among the tried-and-true technologies for travel buyers, corporate self-booking tools and intranet travel sites were the key technologies in the travel toolkit. Sixty-five percent of respondents directly managed their companies' self-booking tool programs, with another 14 percent indirectly involved, while 59 percent directly managed the intranet travel site and 19 percent were indirectly involved.
Just 12 percent of companies polled didn't have a self-booking system, and 8 percent didn't have an internal travel Web site. Every respondent in the largest category, spending more than $60 million on travel and entertainment, had an intranet travel page and corporate self-booking software.
Represented in the under-$5 million category, packaging industry technology provider CTI has a lightly managed travel program. Use of a self-booking tool is one of CTI's only managed travel practices, illustrating the staple that is online booking. "It's not so much about control, but more visibility," said sales support manager Janet Kobs. "We set some things in the tool where it won't let them book a certain size car, etc."
According to TRW Consulting's Tom Wilkinson, a longtime self-booking tool expert and member of the National Business Travel Association's technology committee, "It's been pretty well established for a while that online booking tools have become a standard part of corporate travel management.
"Nevertheless," Wilkinson added, "I was surprised that 65 percent of respondents manage their online booking tools directly, since to me that means they personally configure all the settings or toggles and input their own preferred vendor information. While I realize those settings are designed to be 'user-friendly,' it still can be challenging to remember all the available options, especially for managers who are not using these systems constantly. My only concern there is that some respondents may not be taking full advantage of their tools by keeping them up to date with all changes in policy and preferred vendors."
Consulting Strategies' J. Grant Caplan also thought the 65 percent result seemed high. "What they probably meant is they help select and roll it out, but are they the administrator? Typically, that's the travel management company, even in the case of a direct contract between the corporate buyer and the tech provider. Buyers don't want to spend the time implementing because they're busy with so many things."
However, "that also means the agency may not test it to the degree the corporate will and so on," Caplan added. "Don't let the fox guard the henhouse."
Among the 231 respondents who said they were involved with corporate booking tool programs, 74 percent said they internally marketed and communicated use of the tools, 65 percent selected suppliers, 62 percent measured performance and 58 percent managed contracts (multiple answers were allowed).
Asked about the future relevance of online booking tools as we know them, Caplan echoed some buyers' desire for the corporate booking tool to be the central place or portal for newer technologies like social media and mobile applications.
"It is the most logical place because the key function at heart is still booking travel," said Caplan. "It can be combined gracefully, and they go hand in hand. I expect to see much more cooperation between these products because of open database environments, so taking this booking tool and plugging it into that social media tool and also that intranet site. What's relevant is the integration of the elements of your portal, such as the history of bookings."
Other emerging areas, such as virtual conferencing and environmental sustainability, have potential tie-ins to the booking tool, using prompts for alternatives in the first case and green indicators in the second.
"TMCs and self-booking tool providers should offer a range of communication tools in their product mix to provide the holistic services that businesses will demand," according to a recent American Express-Institute of Travel and Meetings paper. "Suppliers and businesses can work together to trial new communication hubs within key locations to find synergies [and] economies of scale, and to see if this drives commercial value to both parties over the short and long terms."
The paper also addressed the growth of online booking's impact on the TMC: "The TMC should and could provide a one-stop-shop for all meeting arrangements, including new communication alternatives to travel. This might require up-skilling of the TMC consultant back up to advisor as opposed to order taker. This would be an interesting development following the widespread de-skilling that occurred within TMCs over the last five to 10 years as many sought to remove costs in order to address price pressure from corporate clients. New commercial models for TMCs continue to be in flux following continued growth in online self-booking tools."
Despite their ubiquity, it appears booking tools still have room to grow, as 34 percent of the 35 respondents who said their companies did not have a program expected one to be created in the future, and 46 percent believed that should be achieved.
That anyone does not have plans to use online booking is "hard to understand at this point," according to Wilkinson.
But that sentiment and this study are fairly U.S.-centric. While similar trends have taken place in Western Europe, online booking remains new and in some cases suboptimal in certain world regions where technology infrastructures differ and cheaper labor competes well for return on investment.
Some of this may be changing, according to an HRG press statement: "We have identified an upward trend amongst our Asia-Pacific clients keen on making efficiencies in the booking process. The traditional pushback around culture and traveler behavior is not as strong as companies mandate online booking tools from outside Asia to this region and local companies are starting to see the value. Most of our clients are either closely looking at online booking tools or [are] in the throes of piloting a rollout. We believe over the next three years, online booking volumes will grow exponentially in Asia as the tools, carriers and corporations evolve and adapt to the new processes."
Meanwhile, among the 210 respondents who said they were involved with intranet travel sites, 64 percent internally marketed and communicated use of the tools, 57 percent selected suppliers, 52 percent measured performance and 44 percent managed contracts (multiple answers were allowed).
"This is one of the first studies I have seen documenting the use of corporate travel intranets," Wilkinson noted. "It definitely makes sense, however. I can't imagine an organization that would not use Web technology to distribute information and offer virtual services to its employees, and travel is a natural fit in that infrastructure. Again, I'm a little bit surprised by the percentage who claim to manage those sites directly. Even travel managers who insource their travel portal should find it challenging to manage those sites as frequently and dynamically as they should. It's important to keep those portal sites up-to-date so travelers will return to them whenever they need information about travel."
Though they are just as much if not more a part of the managed travel infrastructure as online booking and intranet pages, global distribution systems apparently tend to be the travel agency's thing. Still, 24 percent of respondents said they were directly involved with managing the GDS relationship and 30 percent were indirectly involved. The vast majority of those not involved did not expect that to change.
GDS program involvement is very much driven by the size of company, with 83 percent of respondents from firms spending more than $60 million on T&E saying they were involved--48 percent directly--versus just 40 percent involved at companies spending less than $5 million; 17 percent of all small-company respondents were directly involved. Twenty-nine percent of respondents from these small firms said their companies did not have a GDS program, versus 13 percent for companies in the $5 million to $29.9 million range, 7 percent in the $30 million to $59.9 million category and 7 percent in the $60 million-plus tier.
"I'm definitely not surprised that very large companies are more likely to be involved directly with their GDS programs," said Wilkinson. "There was a time when almost any managed account could extract some form of financial concession based on their selection of GDS. Nowadays, that's much less common and the reason is that most travel management companies have configured their automatic fulfillment around a specific suite of GDS, online booking tool and mid-office" products.
"Smaller companies don't see value in working directly with the GDSs, and agencies are unwilling to allow them to select them because they're collecting money on the back end," said Caplan, referring to incentives paid to TMCs by GDS firms.