Asendas Travel gathered the viewpoints of group of over 50 travel industry professionals to share their expertise on corporate travel trends. To make a long matter short, the feedback they offered revealed there are some external and internal forces that act adding to the complexity of corporate travel, but here are the payoffs: improved risk management, efficiency, increased opportunities for cost savings and expense management.
Corporate travel management, as seen in our previous blog posts, has shifted from the traditional hotel, car rental or air transaction to 360 degree business travel solutions. Thanks to the evolution of AI, Machine Learning and Block chain technologies, corporate travel management tools like Tripeur have started touching day–to–day business travel. So here is a summary of how the travel experts felt the corporate travel trends are taking over traditional methods:
- Traveller Tracking:
It is important to track your employees throughout a trip and how to keep impacted staff in the loop under an organization’s duty of care responsibilities. If the company hasn’t given a thought about it, it is morally and legally an obligation it has to provide.
- Branded Fares:
These are becoming increasingly popular in the industry because they offer the legacy airlines a fare category up against low cost air carriers. They are not preferred by companies that look to control their travel expenses, as they cannot be written into a business travel policy. The online booking tool may have branded fares, but ensure they cannot be booked by graying them out.
- Online Booking Tools:
Travelling employees can view and book flight, hotel and transportation on their own, yet stay travel purchase program compliant. Though there are many online booking tools available in the market each having their own plus and minus, it is important to implement a suitable one.
- Data and Analytics:
It is important to identify travellers by their travel purchase behaviors as one may have an understanding what is driving travel costs. What lies within acceptable benchmarks is averaged numbers, but it’s the actual buying behavior which helps travel manager determine whether travellers are actually supporting the travel program or just good at taking the escape route. This, anyways, will help you take the right course of action.
- Cancellation Policies:
Cancellation polices aren’t going to be the same always and come in the form of 24–and 48–hour cancelling fee, for example. Business travellers must be notified of this change either with a reminder or message to cancel immediately, in case of change of plan.
It is important that companies act along those lines as travel industry trends can impact on the growth as well as the financial position of your organization. Only the use of a travel management suite like Tripeur can result in higher efficiency and cost–cutting. Investing in Tripeur can not only prove to be strategic business decision, but also help travel managers understand frequent travel buyer patterns and the risks and complexities related to corporate travel, notwithstanding how much the organization can spend on travel.