This month, the members of the Think Tank team share their points of view on the upcoming year and what the future holds for their programs and the business of travel management.
Happy New YearSo we survived 2018! What a great year! As we jump into the new year, now is a great time to begin reviewing your travel program – what’s working, what’s not, and most importantly what’s the plan to take your program to the next level? Do you need to focus on your supplier relationships, your travel policy or the traveler experience? Whatever it is it is there are so many opportunities and innovations that the travel buyer can start to integrate into the managed travel program that will enable them to be more nimble, analytical, and a trusted advisor within their organizations. So think about integration of new technologies, taking some risk, and delivering a new level of experience and service into your travel program. It’s a great time to start raising the bar in the corporate travel industry!
– Jennifer SteinkeBuyer BurnoutI once had a hotelier innocently asked me what I did the rest of the year after the hotel RFP was done; he went on to say “beyond, like, your air or car RFPs”. In that moment, I learned that, no, I could not murder people with just my brain. I ran down what we are usually responsible for and the multitudes of directions we are pulled. I talked about duty of care, out of policy approvals and how people who have never worked in our field constantly tell us how we should do our jobs. And to paraphrase Dorian Stonie, “I’ve never heard of a travel department being overstaffed.” We’re tasked with supporting additional verticals, whether we add card, meetings or expense to our workload. My reason for writing about this is, I keep hearing it from my industry colleagues that we’re burned out. I’m constantly in triage mode, trying to figure out what’s the most vital to be done and what can wait. We’re in endless cycles of playing catch-up without ever catching up. And while I feel that I have should have some call to action, all I have is…take your vacation days. Take advantage of the relationships you’ve built and ask for a discounted rate someplace where your phone won’t work – disconnect. Make sure your colleagues do the same.
– Rosemary E. MaloneyEnrich the ExperienceFresh into a new year, I have to wonder what 2019 will bring our industry in terms of challenges and opportunities. We’ve spent a couple of years talking about the importance of traveler satisfaction and the direct impact it has to our travel program and the company. I feel this will continue to be a priority. Some days my head spins when I think of the number of new technology companies that have emerged to introduce solutions to help us with this initiative.While technology is key to our efficiencies in travel, we can’t forget about the importance of one-on-one conversations with our road warriors. This is easy for me to say – most of mine are here at our corporate headquarters. But the insight they can provide on what they consider important will help guide the way toward what would truly make them happy.
– Cheryl Benjamin RFP BluesThe 2018 year of travel management is coming to a close and unfortunately the dreaded annual hotel RFP is only 50 percent complete. It seems no matter what month I begin this process, I am always in the same situation in December, chasing down hotels to even respond. It is always a puzzle to me why hoteliers want to utilize one-year deals beginning and closing on the calendar year as opposed to offering multi-year deals or shifting this negotiation to other times of the year. I can understand accountants working long hours from January through April based on tax filing deadlines imposed by the government. However why would an industry put themselves through this tedious process in Q4 every year based on nothing more than following historical precedent?Unfortunately, I don’t see my RFP completely closing out until mid-January as seems to be the case each year; I look forward to the time where we can all end this madness by being more flexible in our hotel partnerships.
– Chris Brockman AirportsI love airports. Each airport is so different from every other. Airports have now taken locale cultures and restaurants. Travelers are able to enjoy an experience via their flight connections. Travelers are also able to work out, practice yoga, shop and at some airports you are able to catch a quick nap. Kudos to the airports that have reached out to companies to represent their local treasure and share with others. During this coming year, enjoy your travels through the airports.
Look AheadThere has been a lot of speculation over the past couple of years about big changes coming to travel distribution and processes. That conjecture centers around innovations in artificial intelligence, NDC standards, recursive search engines, blockchain, and mobility to name a few of the most prominent. All of the latest technology seems focused on efforts to improve the corporate traveler experience.The landscape is changing in corporate travel and it seems that soon these new innovations could usher in drastic fluctuations to how travel is purchased by corporations. Travel managers will have to pay close attention to the coming changes. I’m looking forward to the challenges and how they will be applied in my travel program.
– Mark ZieglerMeeting ExpectationsThe business travel industry has done a decent job of establishing standard, best-in-class metrics that make it easy to report the overall effectiveness of transient travel from a cost standpoint and even from a behavioral perspective. Although the metrics deemed best-in-class will forever be debated, not all data points work for all companies. But what about all the money spent on hosting business-building events? After all these years of developing data points for transient travel, it’s now time to have a good, hard look at meetings and events spending and behavior. Without it, we’re only telling part of the story. Companies invest in travel and events to engage and collaborate with their customers, sell them new things, provide customer service, scout products and grow their business (just to name a few). Who will create the best, holistic travel dashboard in the industry? It’s somebody’s opportunity for the taking!
– Wendy Palmer