Maneuvers that most directly
lead to travel cost savings, such as boosting policy compliance and bettering
supplier negotiations, top the 2011 to-do lists of travel managers throughout
the world, according to a new report from Carlson Wagonlit Travel's Travel
Management Institute. These goals topped such other tactics as better managing
corporate meetings and greening the travel program in a CWT survey of 187
multinational travel program managers from North America, Europe, Latin America
and Asia-Pacific.
More than two-thirds of
respondents indicated that improving traveler compliance was among their five
top travel-program priorities this year, more than any other action.
The online survey, conducted
September-November 2010, asked respondents to rank their five most important
priorities from a list of 11. More than 60 percent also identified optimizing
online adoption, driving air and ground transportation savings and optimizing
hotel spend as this year's top goals. CWT therefore classified those actions,
along with improving compliance, as having "high importance."
To boost compliance, most
respondents indicated they would focus on communicating policy to travelers and
managers, and tracking and communicating compliance levels, while fewer than 40
percent planned stronger actions like filtering noncompliant supplier options
from online booking tools or allowing travel agents to enforce compliance.
Respondents were permitted to select multiple answers.
Ninety-two percent of
respondents from the Asia-Pacific region, where online booking is less
established as a travel management cornerstone, listed optimizing online
adoption as a top 2011 priority. Of all respondents who did so, at least 60
percent plan to improve communication and training, broaden the features and
scope of the corporate online booking tool and track tool use and compliance.
"The wide scope of planned
measures also reflects the varying levels of online maturity reached by travel
programs," according to the CWT report. "Early adopters of online
booking tools intend to be more focused on enhancing online booking features,
which is the case of 92 percent of the respondents from North America who
identified online booking as a top priority. Companies implementing their OBTs
later, typically in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, plan to concentrate on
communicating with travelers and training them to book online using the
corporate tool."
Driving savings in air and
ground programs most frequently means promoting travel alternatives and
balancing restricted and nonrestricted airfares, according to the survey.
Almost 60 percent of respondents plan in 2011 to mandate booking channels and
consolidate hotel spending to better optimize that category.
Prioritizing Mobility, Tabling Green
Illustrating the rapid ascent of
the importance of mobile applications in managed travel programs, nearly half
of all respondents indicated they planned 2011 measures to "enhance the
traveler experience," a phrase that for 65 percent of them meant offering
travelers mobile technologies. More respondents plan to enhance the traveler
experience, a category that also encompasses 29 percent who plan to implement
social media tools, than plan to optimize travel policy, develop key
performance indicators, address safety and security or further consolidate the
travel program.
"It is interesting to find
a priority that is not oriented toward cost-control so high in the ranking,
underlining how the travel manager's role increasingly goes beyond cost control
to consider travelers' well-being," according to CWT.
Conversely, only 11 percent of
respondents prioritized making their programs environmentally friendly, which
CWT characterized as reflective of today's economic realities.
"Sustainable business travel has not gained much traction, although it may
be simply that investments in green strategies have stalled temporarily due to
budget trimming rather than any real 'green fatigue,' " according to the
report. "In fact, there is evidence that green travel is not being ignored
by companies, who are more often including sustainable criteria in requests for
proposals and considering carbon reporting a necessity. These are signs that
green travel will gather speed in the years ahead."
Only one-quarter of respondents
indicated "tackling meetings and events" was a top-five priority this
year. CWT noted that meetings management may not fall under all respondents'
professional purview, but added that given what the agency calls the potential
to save 10 percent to 25 percent of meetings costs, "tackling meetings and
events should be high on M&E buyers' agendas."