The average salary for travel management professionals in the United States rose by nearly 10 percent between 2004 and 2006, according to surveys by Runzheimer International. Data from 41 responding travel managers showed the average 2006 salary was $76,405--close to the base average pay of $77,810 determined by a 2006 National Business Travel Association Foundation survey of 145 travel managers.
Meanwhile, Canadian travel management professionals (including all titles) also are enjoying increased pay with the 2006 average base salary rising nearly 8 percent year-over-year, according to the results of a January NBTA-Canada survey of 102 travel professionals.
A Business Travel Newspoll of 92 travel managers last year produced an average 2006 compensation package (including incentives and bonuses) of $98,545--up 7.4 percent from 2004. The NBTA study had shown an 11 percent increase in total compensation versus 2002, for 232 corporate travel professionals with all titles ranging from coordinator to vice president.
According to P. Jason King Associates CEO Jason King, a recruiter, "Salaries are much higher than ever before in corporate travel management." But he cast doubt on the survey results: "The averages are generally too low. Eighty percent of the time, the polls that are taken are so off from reality that I don't understand why they go in that direction. It's companies with smaller air volumes and it won't reflect the real salaries."
While the newest polls did not reveal compensation by company size, the NBTA Foundation survey did. It found that average total compensation including bonuses and incentives was $112,825 at companies with more than $5 billion in sales, as opposed to $74,575 at firms under $100 million.
In addition, the NBTA Foundation includes a disclaimer on its results: "Because organizations will differ depending upon their location, size and other factors, any two organizations may offer their employees a reasonably attractive compensation package and yet be very different. For example, duration of employment and nature of prior experience will obviously influence the compensation offering for a particular individual. Thus, a deviation between anyone's compensation and a number appearing on a table in this report is not necessarily good or bad; it is merely an indication that additional scrutiny may be warranted."
The latest Runzheimer research, conducted in December, identified the typical travel management professional as a 47 year-old woman with more than 10 years of experience in travel management and two to five years in her current position.
Runzheimer's results indicated that an average of 70 percent of the respondents' time is spent on travel management--essentially unchanged since 2003. In Canada, 80 percent of respondents' time is devoted to travel. According to the earlier BTNand NBTA polls, some duties that travel managers handle which could be considered outside the scope of travel management include: meeting management, personnel administration, incentive planning, expense reporting, procurement cards, air or car fleets and mobile telecommunications. The Canadian survey showed that more than 40 percent of respondents were also responsible for office services or facilities management.
According to King, the more diversity a travel manager can show, the better. "The people doing the hiring have decided to offer higher salaries, but they will want multitasking from corporate travel managers," he said. "Those candidates who can multitask are actually earning much greater salaries--in excess of $150,000 a year."
The top responsibilities of travel management professionals surveyed by Runzheimer were travel policy development, responding to traveler concerns and questions, recommending and implementing cost savings initiatives, travel vendor negotiations and policy enforcement. Vendor negotiations represented the top responsibility for participants in the BTNand NBTA surveys. According to the NBTA-Canada poll, top duties (in order) were travel policy development, vendor negotiations and contract management, policy enforcement and travel agency relationships.
According to a Runzheimer press statement, "The top two most challenging travel duties of respondents are reported as policy enforcement (23 percent) and recommending and implementing cost savings initiatives (21 percent)." The NBTA-Canada survey, which it conducted jointly with Runzheimer a year earlier, also found policy enforcement to be the respondents' "most challenging" duty.
Nine percent of the Runzheimer respondents said they attended graduate school, with a Master's in Business Administration named as the most popular advanced degree. Eleven percent of the NBTA-Canada respondents had attended grad school.