Op-Ed: Modeling For Travel Manager Survival

Now that corporations are twisting arms of a lot of travelers to become their own travel agents and find lowest airfares, someone may ask, "Why do we need a travel management company or even a travel manager?" If their only roles are to negotiate airfares or provide backup to travelers, these tasks can be assigned to procurement or low-salaried employees trained to use global distribution systems.

Serious myopia afflicts travel management programs at many, or even the majority of, corporations and government entities. Below are some common misperceptions or outright omissions.

•Getting the lowest airfare is more important than any other travel procurement issue.

•Competitive requests for proposals to major airlines, hotel chains and car rental companies will assure best trip value from suppliers.

•Only air, hotel and car rental suppliers are the critical vendors in travel procurement.

•Use of company-paid automobiles is not "travel."

•Trip elapsed time is not in travel management's realm.

•The cost of travelers' or administrators' booking time is not a travel management issue.

•Maximum choice is an ideal environment for efficient travel procurement.

•Left to his/her own ingenuity, a traveler will make apt choices.

Maybe your own organization has avoided all of these pitfalls, but I doubt it because I have never encountered any situation where one or another has not been in place. I think travel management has been going in a wrong direction for a long time, one which depends more on influencing vendors than influencing traveler behavior. Travel management should concentrate on trip management, i.e., finding and standardizing that best combination of services and prices for every predictable corporate destination. The term "trip modeling" defines this kind of travel management.

Consider that every time a traveler goes somewhere on business, he or she creates a collection of events that combine to form a template. However, except in rare cases, that template is only superficially evaluated and is very often forgotten by traveler, travel manager and business unit controller. Thus, information is assembled and organized for naught. Another traveler heading to that same place may create a significantly different template, to be trashed after recording its content for expense reimbursement.

Trip modeling implies retention and amendment of that organized trip information so a future traveler will not have to create his own. What's the difference? If trip modeling is not used, it probably involves from 30 to 60 minutes of wasted time the traveler doesn't want to spend; it may cause increased trip expenses; it may involve security and safety problems because of traveler ignorance; and it could create job retention problems for those involved in travel management. If trip modeling is used, on the other hand, every traveler to that destination, with adaptation for different points of origin, e.g., home or branch office, etc., will have a similar experience and a similar cost. That consistency allows for better trip management.

We were working with a government agency whose travelers principally worked as auditors of specific destination operations. Travel generally was budgeted at levels based on prior years' experience, with no destination specificity. If annual personal vehicle usage was $2 million, depending on official guidelines it might rise or decline by, say, 10 percent. Same with air and lodging expenses. We discovered, however, in our analysis of trip samples, that some costs were unreasonably high by any standard. Our recommended solution was to detail every specific (in terms of geo-location or five-digit zip code) destination, with attention to these issues:

•The distance in road miles from base office to destination

•The elapsed driving time under normal circumstances

•The most convenient airport to the destination

•The most convenient and economical transfer service from the airport to the destination

•The hotels in close proximity to the destination and the typical prices and AAA ratings

•The lowest elapsed time from the base office to the destination

•The lowest cost from the base office to the destination

•The lowest overall cost of time and price from base office to destination

Based on this information, anyone could create a trip model that clearly would establish what is probably the best value from various origin points to that destination. After that trip model is published, probably on a corporate intranet, travelers from those origin points could look up their destinations and then apply trip model templates. This would accelerate booking, but it might not yield lowest airfare. However, it still could be the most economical means of getting a traveler to that destination.

Once trip models are in place, but based on non-negotiated pricing, travel managers could go to suppliers and conduct negotiations that would justify pricing concessions on every piece of transportation and lodging, maybe including dining, because a traveler would be told to consult a trip model before making travel arrangements. If a trip model was not used for travel to a destination covered with a template, a message could be generated automatically to that traveler's supervisor indicating an out-of-policy trip plan.

Trip models tend to solve all of those issues that are being ignored or taken for granted today. They immediately save repetitious trip planning to common destinations, reducing booking time costs that arise from too many choices. They generate lowest overall trip costs, include consideration of driving and take in such issues as taxi versus car rental versus public transportation for airport transfers without compromising traveler convenience. They also can be standardized for different groups of travelers, to account for such things as salary level affected by elapsed time, and can be tailored to different corporate missions.

Travel managers should consider the creation of trip templates for any corporate destination that has repetitive travel by even one person, because use of them will save on all aspects of travel: price, planning complexity, productivity and supplier assurance.

If you don't start doing it now, your successor will be required to do so.

Rolfe Shellenberger is an industry consultant and Business Travel News editorial board member.