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."
The article originally was published in Business Travel News