It may be summertime, but few travel procurement professionals are likely to enjoy a workload slowdown this year. It appears the travel industry's barometer is once again building pressure: Suppliers point to a welcome return of last-minute, higher-priced business travel; lingering repercussions of the volcanic ash, Nashville flooding and other natural disasters also have lengthened the workday for many forced to devise new ways to communicate, reroute or rebook travelers and or meetings; and by early May the pressures of industry consolidation again emerged in the air and on the ground for car rental companies.
The proposed mergers of Continental and United airlines, as well as British Airways and Iberia, no doubt have many travel procurement teams scrambling to analyze the potential short- and long-term impacts on contracts, concessions and service. In Cover Story, we delve into the latest proposed mergers, lessons learned from the Delta-Northwest merger and the impact of alliances.
The hotel spend category--the second largest for most travel programs--is the focus of both the Supply Chain section and Perspective. Supply Chain unveils a new technology platformthat aims to help corporations overcome the shortcomings of existing hotel management practices to identify, leverage and finally manage all hotel spending. In Perspective, University of Texas at Austin intercollegiate athletics travel manager Kevin Maguireargues that the industry needs a new way to source hotels. The traditional request for proposal process, Maguire said, is too time-consuming and expensive to continue.
The pressures of managing travel at a media company are highlighted in a profile of CBC/Radio Canada's corporate travel and strategic sourcing manager Pauline Valiquette. MeadWestvaco's early travel management globalization success and current initiatives are detailed in Case Study.
In Meetings, we report the latest forecast for videoconferencing and telepresenceand ask what role travel and meeting managers should play in the selection, adoption or return on investment measurement of the emerging technology. Elsewhere in this section, the National Business Travel Association's Groups & Meetings Committeehighlights ways to apply a corporate social responsibility toolkit to meetings and events.
Emerging trends on ancillary feesand mobile apps for corporate travelare featured, respectively, in Leading Practices and Technology.
Pressure may be building, but the travel management sector has proven time and again that it can weather the storm ... if not reroute around it.