Has the phrase "every penny counts" ever resonated more in the corporate world than during the past year? Apparently not, according to polls showing that travel buyers are feeling serious pressure to squeeze savings by tapping every tactic.
Illustrating a relentless focus on the bottom line, a January ProMedia.travel Content Solutions survey found that 43 percent of 422 travel managers identified the need to "find additional savings" as an area in which they were feeling the most pressure. The second most popular choice, at 19 percent, was "reduced travel budget," followed by 12 percent indicating "revising policy to address new travel environment" and 7 percent indicating "supplier management with reduced volumes."
Managing meetings and managing demand picked up 6 percent each in the Concur-sponsored survey, and respondents selecting "other" wrote in a few topics that do not warrant mention.
Much like their peers in corporate meetings planning, travel buyers clearly are attempting to do more with less.
How are they doing that? Asked to choose from among a list of items that would influence their programs in 2010, respondents largely focused on globalization, T&E process automation and meeting management.
According to a separate Carlson Wagonlit Travel survey of 169 travel managers, taken between September and November and released this week, the following items will become a higher priority for travel managers in 2010 than they were last year: optimizing hotel spend (according to 60 percent of respondents), improving traveler compliance (55 percent), optimizing simple bookings (50 percent) and driving air and ground transport savings (50 percent).
In lodging, CWT's survey also found that 34 percent of respondents planned to reinforce their hotel policies, while 47 percent already had done so during the 12 months prior. Thirty-one percent indicated they planned to monitor missed hotel savings after 51 percent already began doing so within the previous year.
In its paper detailing the survey results, CWT offered some suggestions: "Replace a percentage of preferred hotels from the hotel program with preferred hotels in a lower category; set a reasonable per-night spend limit for main destinations; implement policy and compliance measures encouraging travelers to book hotels earlier; consolidate hotel programs regionally or globally and use best practices in negotiations; increase the use of preferred hotels through policy and compliance measures; ensure that hotels are booked via the travel management company; and introduce a series of GDS audits, including audits for rate squatting."
CWT found that 60 percent of respondents during the previous year started to monitor preferred supplier compliance and 73 percent began tracking out-of-policy bookings, while 24 percent and 17 percent, respectively, planned to do so.
"The following measures can help drive compliance," CWT wrote. "Engage management throughout the organization; provide travelers with clear, comprehensive guidelines; communicate and provide training on the travel policy; actively remind travelers of the policy; implement point-of-sale measures; and track and communicate progress and take corrective action." Forty-four percent of respondents initiated pretrip approval processes within the previous 12 months, while 9 percent were planning to do so.
CWT described the optimization of simple bookings in the context of increasing online self-booking adoption: "Companies may wish to consider the following measures," according to the paper. "Have senior managers mandate the use of online booking tools; monitor usage individually and globally; encourage travel counselors to steer travelers to online booking tools for simple, point-to-point transactions; communicate statistics showing online adoption rates by each division/user to increase awareness at all levels of the organization; create internal rewards and incentives; and develop internal communications to promote online booking tool usage."
Fifty-nine percent of respondents told CWT they had reinforced their air policy during the prior year, while 39 percent said the same of ground; 17 percent and 22 percent, respectively, said they had plans to do so.