Asia/Pacific-based travel
buyers are tightening premium-class travel policies and pushing advance-purchase
requirements, but tracking ancillary fees remains a low priority in the region,
according to a survey of 410 buyers conducted by Egencia and the Global
Business Travel Association Foundation.
Comprised predominately of
travel managers from Australia, China, Singapore and India, survey results indicated
that more than half of travel buyers in the region completely disallow
premium-class air travel in the region. Of the more than half of responding buyers
who reviewed policies within the past two years, 72 percent made business-class
restrictions more strict. That is opposite of recent GBTA-Egencia survey
results among European travel buyers.
Buyers in Asia/Pacific also
increasingly are restricting use of upper-tier hotels. Slightly more than half
of the buyers who altered policies in the past two years indicated their
organizations restricted hotel stays to certain tiers or service classes,
according to the survey.
Many buyers in the region
also encourage advance booking of airfares, according to survey results. Eight
percent have a 21-day advance purchase policy, 12 percent have a 14-day policy
and 16 percent have a seven-day policy.
Meanwhile, relatively few Asia/Pacific
buyers are tracking airline and hotel ancillary fees through card or expense
data, despite buyers in the region reporting that such fees account for 13
percent of all travel and expense spending. Thirty-one percent are tracking the
fees, largely through expense tools, and of those who are not tracking them, 77
percent said they have no plans to do so within the next several years.
About half of surveyed
buyers, however, require travelers to consider ancillary airline fees when
calculating lowest logical airfare.
Mandates on preferred vendor
use also are the exception rather than the rule in the region. Thirty-seven
percent of those surveyed require travelers to use preferred airlines when
available, and 32 percent require buyers to book preferred hotels.
Consistent with a panel
discussion at a GBTA conference last month, the survey indicated that online
booking use remains low in Asia/Pacific when compared to other regions.
Forty-four percent of buyers surveyed indicated their organizations have not
deployed an online booking tool, and 19 percent said their organizations have
deployed one but do not require travelers to use it. Twenty-one percent of
buyers said that travelers should book through online booking tools whenever
possible.
According to survey results,
online booking tools in the region are most widely used among Australian
organizations.