There are more temptations than ever for travelers to be
noncompliant, and some anecdotes of companies testing open corporate travel
booking policies, but there is scant research proving that managed business
travelers increasingly are "going rogue." Yet some technology
suppliers are exploring new solutions enabling corporate programs to remain
whole even when road warriors step out of line.
Travel buyers for years have longed for such solutions in
certain categories, particularly lodging. In air travel, though, compliance has
been much higher and sanctioning non-channel bookings is controversial to say
the least. Apparently the likes of Concur, KDS and Traveldoo have determined
leakage could be lucrative.
At KDS, "We don't see this as a major play today, but
it could become one," said vice president for product strategy Oliver
Quayle. "On the other hand, it could be a hot topic today that vanishes
tomorrow. We think travel programs are likely to end up somewhere in between,
with say 70 percent of the spend managed and 30 percent unmanaged. We're not
saying you don't need a managed travel program, but let's open the debate."
Concur's executives are less tentative.
"If you manage a travel and expense program, this means
something big for you," said Concur president Rajeev Singh last month
during a client conference as he was announcing Concur's Open Booking
initiative. "You get access to bookings no matter where they come from.
Anyone who tries to stop you from getting that data will fail. This is not the
end of managed travel. It is not the end of spend and visibility management. It's
not the end of adding value to travelers who don't always know what they want
to do or how to do it. It's the opposite. You only need a different set of
tools, and we need to bring more people to the table. It's the dawn of a new
era of travel booking.
"There's a whole set of travelers who will be booking
within, and love the comfort of, a managed travel program," Singh
continued. "There's another set who might not do exactly that, who might
book air in one spot and car and hotel in another. That's the world we're
living in right now. This idea of managed versus unmanaged is kind of
silly—sometimes we are, sometimes we are not."
Singh referenced the relatively weak levels of TMC compliance
the industry has always known when it comes to hotel bookings. He then showed a
video featuring Salesforce.com travel buyer Ralph Colunga saying that when
travelers think they can "find it cheaper on the web … we say, 'Go for it.'
" Salesforce uses Concur's TripIt Pro to capture information about
bookings outside the traditional channel.
Singh said Concur's plan is to use TripIt to push outside
bookings "directly into Concur Travel and Expense—to take all those
itineraries, managed or unmanaged, into one trip … from wherever they're
sourced."
Concur executive vice president of platform services Barry
Padgett later told The Beat that the
company also is initiating discussions with airlines to enable "open
bookings" that would give corporate clients the ability to enforce policy,
apply discounts and track transactions when travelers book on airline websites.
In a follow-up interview, Singh sought to downplay the application to air
travel, instead emphasizing lodging and ground transport.
"Concur has a bunch of big customers that spend
billions and billions on air, and they're saying, 'We want this to happen.
Concur, you go figure out how to make this work,' " said Padgett. "It's
not a Concur-hatched plan to disintermediate the travel supply chain." Still,
for those companies that would enable such behavior, he cited the added benefit
of "cost savings with respect to some of the traditional travel supply
chain costs that might fall out of an airline ticket if the customer goes
direct to an airline."
Some TMC executives are wary, to say the least, about these
approaches. Those who advocate full content being offered through the GDSs, of
course, would be against the idea.
"It's unfortunate that Concur has to endorse a
functionality that will cripple many travel agencies who are the ones currently
assisting in the selling, support and fulfillment of its travel bookings today,"
one TMC advocate wrote on BusinessTravelNews.com. "It's hard enough for
travel management companies to consolidate travel bookings through a single
source and report on that data accurately. Now Concur is essentially cutting
the agency out of the mix altogether."
Short's Travel president and CEO David LeCompte was a bit
more open-minded: "While letting travelers book elsewhere is something I'm
not afraid of, and would embrace, I think [Concur and KDS] are missing some key
things. If they book anywhere, how easy is it for travelers to get assistance
on the road? Who do they call? The average traveler could get in a bind. Who
tracks their unused tickets? Our average corporate account has about 8 percent
of all tickets unused, and we manage that. The airline is not going to call
them to let them know. Will they know exactly where all their travelers are?
Maybe itinerary aggregators do this, but what if something changes en route? If
they book anywhere, do you actually know if they are booking a reasonable fare?"
Travel and Transport chief information officer Mike Kubasik,
who attended Concur's client conference, said, "I kind of understand what
Concur is saying there, but I would really question the validity of allowing
[travelers] to book anywhere with duty of care being so important. I would
think a much easier way to manage the program is through the credit card rather
than allowing people to book anywhere and hope they email it." Concur's
plan, Singh said, is designed to preserve duty of care.
Kubasik said the industry hype machine still was overheating
on the travel program at Google—in which employees can book anywhere as long as
they log details into a central system and keep within set rate caps—but he
argued that Google's scheme is "very atypical" and "not reality."
T&T presented similar "open" concepts to its advisory board of 35
corporate accounts and Kubasik said not one showed interest. Yet, he added that
"if it does happen, we need to enable it."
Concur's Padgett acknowledged the concept is anathema to
some corporations that "may never enable this or switch it on or allow
their users to do it." But he said there are "a lot of forward-thinking
customers pushing us down this path."
"We need to be able to provide to our travelers a
method that allows them to stay in policy and book the way they live—through
multiple channels," according to Cisco Systems finance director Susan
Lichtenstein. "TMCs should be addressing this proactively with their
customers. How can TMCs change quickly enough to meet the need of their
customers? We already know from recent history that leisure travel is rarely
booked by an agent, so if that is the business you continue to drive to, then
you will not succeed. If you move to the business of global data management and
show value in proactive strategies then you will grow your business. We are not
in Kansas anymore."
Not Just Concur
KDS plans in the second half of this year to release
Maverick, a web browser plug-in which can detect attempted travel bookings made
on any company laptop or desktop. Depending on a client's attitude on
forbidding, tolerating or perhaps encouraging out-of-policy reservations, the application
can be configured to respond in different ways to the booking attempt. In the
first instance, Maverick would trigger a pop-up on the screen warning travelers
they should be using the preferred booking tool because it ensures they can buy
at the negotiated rate. If the traveler elects to book anyway, Maverick would
forward the data to the KDS client reporting tool and, if required, to the
client's travel security provider for employee tracking purposes. KDS also is
working to offer travelers the option to flow payment information into their
online KDS expense report.
KDS' Quayle said the impetus for Maverick was corporate
travel industry discussion about the extent to which employees bypass official
booking channels, and whether that should be permissible. The debate follows
the much-cited Google travel program and the belief expressed in some quarters
that travelers often can buy more wisely outside their preferred programs than
within them.
Quayle hopes that Maverick will answer such questions as
whether it makes sense to cut travelers loose. "We will be able to report
on whether maverick spend is costing you more than spend through preferred
channels," he said.
"It's a matter of fact that travelers may search the
web and book directly on a supplier or online travel agency website,"
according to Nabih El Aroussi, president and CEO of Egencia-owned Traveldoo,
which revealed a similar plan last year. "We want to cooperate with the
client and the TMC to integrate the data back [into the Traveldoo booking and
expense systems] and provide a consolidated view on the travel spend. We have
made good progress in the past months in integrating non-GDS data feeds from
preferred travel vendors. We are working on the last piece of the puzzle, to
add automated email processing capabilities to handle bookings made on
supplier/OTA websites. We will enable our clients to keep track and gain a
consolidated view on 100 percent of travel reservations and 100 percent of the
spend. We will conduct our first pilots by year-end."
— Jay Boehmer and Amon
Cohen contributed to this report.
The report originally
appeared in the June 18, 2012, issue of Business
Travel News.