The restriction of people's movement was a stark reminder to business leaders: Smart travel drives successful companies. As we emerge in 2022 from the most profound global health crisis in more than a century, there is a unique opportunity to redefine the role of the travel manager. 

Travel disruption over the last two years has reinforced how essential face-to-face meetings are for companies that value meaningful collaboration. Without travel and meetings, it’s difficult to properly innovate. It’s hard for colleagues to build relationships and trust. And it’s virtually impossible to instill values and build a winning culture. All these traits are core to successful businesses, economies and societies. 

While most of the world was locked down, we must never forget that around the world many thousands of essential workers continued to travel. Business leaders understood the stakes were high, which meant communications, the provision of real-time data, duty-of-care policies and disruption management were of paramount importance. 

So, what does this mean for the travel function—and the travel manager—in the future? Will the C-suite door remain open? 

The world has changed, and people want to do things differently. Employees, clients and partners want to be confident they’re working for and with responsible, sustainable and inclusive organizations. 

Traditional patterns of work and travel are shifting, along with the relationship between companies and their employees. Remote and hybrid working has forced bosses to rethink how colleagues meet and interact. New, creative ways to develop team cohesion, engagement, productivity and trust are therefore being sought. Our own research for the 2022 Global Meetings & Events Forecast found that the internal meetings category is expected to show the most growth in 2022. 

Blurring lines between professional and personal lives means travel and mobility become more central to traditional HR issues: employee experience, well-being, company culture and retention. Increasingly, travel managers will need to work with leaders and colleagues across multiple functions to tackle new challenges. 

A sharper focus on burnout, employee attrition and retention are driving interest in more robust employee well-being strategies. The new and evolving ways of working and living mean travel, mobility and interaction become central to the employee value proposition.

This evolution could see the travel manager role being both elevated and integrated into a more
core function, driving wider employee mobility and interaction policies, budgets and programs that support overall company culture and strategies. In short, a shift from transactional to transformational. 

Given the pivotal nature of the role, a case can be made in 2022 for the travel manager to get a seat at the C-suite table. The program owner should at least be included in the initial policymaking conversations, rather than handed decisions at later stages. They should be more active, less passive. 

Key Dimensions of an Expanded Travel Manager Role 

Employee welfare: An expanded travel manager role comes with increased responsibilities for employee welfare—at a time when the pandemic has made us all more cognizant of mental, as well as physical, wellbeing. 

Sustainability: After the financial crash in 2008, sustainability and so-called green travel vanished from the corporate agenda as companies scrambled to focus on cost. However, with the consequences of climate change now more visibly acute, organizations realize that taking responsibility for their carbon footprint is not only the right thing to do, it's essential to future-proof their brands. The 2021 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey found 90 percent of CEOs agreed that climate change needs to be addressed urgently, with 86 percent saying their organizations can play positive roles. The road towards more sustainable travel may be long and paved with challenges, but the travel manager has an important role to play in helping navigate the journey. 

More corporate social responsibility: Business owners, shareholders and management understand that an organization’s corporate social responsibility performance is under unprecedented scrutiny. Supplier audits that assess a raft of CSR metrics, including sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion credentials, are increasingly common. 

Rise to the opportunity in 2022

Managed travel is at a pivotal moment in its history. Travel programs are evolving to enable more of the interactions that drive corporate culture, promote company values and ultimately power the vitality and success of the enterprise. At the same time, the travel function now underpins a company’s employee well-being, sustainability and diversity priorities. 

This inflection point presents travel managers with a landmark opportunity to redefine their role and grow their influence. Increasingly, they can lead and drive the changes that prepare organizations to thrive in an unpredictable future. Travel managers ready to seize the opportunity will seek to be included in key conversations across human resources, security, information security, finance, DE&I and sustainability. They will ask how their programs can align with these goals and drive success. They will engage with leadership to raise awareness of the crucial role travel and mobility play in supporting and achieving overall corporate objectives.

They will take these learnings and apply them to the sourcing process, for example, choosing sustainable hotels and venues, electric vehicles an diverse-owned businesses when possible. They will integrate company values across the organization by applying them to cross-department projects such as event planning. Overall, they will align with meetings and events for more strategic sustainable sourcing and best practices. They will also assess budget and resource needs to support new working patterns and dispersed workforces.