Op-Ed: Inaugurating Optimism During Challenging Times
The Jan. 20 presidential inauguration marks an historic change for the United States.
I recently read a USA Today article about people's hopes for our new president, Barack Obama, and his administration. The article quotes a USA Today/Gallup poll that says 68 percent of the country has a favorable opinion of then-President-elect Obama, and most respondents believe the country will be better off four years from now.
That optimism is encouraging and has me thinking about our industry, which is one of many clearly affected by the global economic downturn. Sometimes, it's hard to remain optimistic when we see business travel down dramatically around the world, airlines reducing even more capacity and the dour forecast for hotel occupancy in 2009.
Yet, like the nearly 70 percent of Americans who feel optimistic about the new administration and the nation's future, I too remain optimistic about our industry. Surely, we all will need to manage our resources more conservatively and cautiously. Yet, in the end, business travel is a business of connecting one another to customers, prospective customers, business partners and employees. This, I am certain, remains constant.
As a travel management company, we have the unique ability and responsibility to help our customers manage this limited resource more efficiently and effectively and to provide advice and insight on ways to reduce spend—or perhaps equally as important—maximize their return on this business-critical investment. That is precisely what it is, an investment in growth, one that deserves the same return-on-investment measures as other critical business investment.
That will mean fewer internal meetings and less staff travel and fewer conferences in the near term. Yet, travel management companies are tasked with the accountability to help customers turn over every stone on spend and provide solutions to assist companies in doing the right things.
Our role as experts in this field is to provide technology solutions to accomplish this. It can take the form of online booking and e-fulfillment, business services marketplaces for the procurement of services beyond air hotel and car, pre-travel authorization solutions and audits, point-of-sale demand management tools, small-meetings technology, traveler security tracking— even new products that facilitate internal real-time videoconferencing.
When we layer these solutions with expert advice and benchmarking, we can ensure that the customer's investment has been truly maximized. After all, in addition to providing a global, 24/7, quality traveler experience, these competencies are at the core of our value propositions.
On a related note, I recently returned from a business trip to Asia that included visits to Shanghai, Hong Kong and New Delhi. The fact is, the desire to manage travel spending more effectively rings true in those markets as well. So, while this economic downturn is global, so too is the need to do an even better job managing what is typically a corporation's second-largest controllable expense.
So count me in among the 68 percent who remain hopeful and optimistic, not only about the new president and his administration, but also that we will be better off in the not-too-distant future.
In the meantime, I, along with my colleagues at American Express Business Travel—and I'm sure at other travel management companies as well—will do our part to help our customers to get through the tough times.