It Starts with the Traveler: The True Value of Travel Management
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Did you know that the average business traveler spends 26 days of their working year on business trips? With such a large percentage of time being spent on business travel, having a managed travel program can save you time, improve the wellbeing of travelers, increase compliance, and ultimately have a positive impact on the bottom line.
Table of contents
What is travel management and why is it important?
Travel management
There are many ways to define travel management. But from a ‘best in class' perspective, travel management is about ensuring frictionless travel for the entire end-to-end journey. It involves supporting the traveler and working in partnership with the travel manager to execute their strategy.
When we asked Mel Quinn, Director of Corporate Travel for Travel Counsellors, the value of travel management, she simply replied, "How much do you value your people?" For Mel, and many of the experts we interviewed for this series of articles, the focus always came back to one thing: the traveler.
Challenges of travel management
The value of strategic travel management lies in not only ensuring that travelers are supported and cared for but also supports everyone making those journeys work — the travel bookers, the travel managers, the HR support, the risk management teams — any stakeholders in the process.
This support doesn’t come without its challenges though. Let’s go through a few of them:
Cost vs. value
One of the main challenges, and an ongoing source of contention, is the “cost vs. value” debate. Providing traveler-centric support that also aligns with the business and travel strategy is not simple, and there is a cost.
“We tend to focus on headline costs, not the service and support we receive,” explains Danny Cockton, VP Global Travel Services, Wood Plc. “It shouldn’t be a conundrum. The value should be articulated well."
"For travel managers it is really important that they have the ability, and the channel within their organization, to communicate that value [of travel].”
Danny Cockton, VP Global Travel Services, Wood Plc.
Duty of care
Increasingly complex global landscapes and geopolitical unrest brings into sharp focus the importance of having a safe and well-managed program for corporate travelers.
This concern for traveler safety keeps Alice Linley-Munro, Resourcing and Travel Manager for Oil Spill Response, awake at night.
“It’s easy to think of travelers as assets, but they’re human. They deserve to feel safe, physically and psychologically, whilst they’re away.”
Alice Linley-Munro, Resourcing and Travel Manager for Oil Spill Response
Sustainability
From carbon offsetting to zero emission initiatives, sustainability is a hot topic within the travel community
Activating your choice and working with the right suppliers to ensure you’re minimizing your carbon footprint, whilst maximizing your traveler experience brings incredible value to your program.
“You have a choice. You can choose an electric vehicle. You can choose to work with a supplier who provides that and also captures all your carbon footprint data.”
Mel Quinn, Director of Corporate Travel for Travel Counsellors
Compliance and policy adherence
When we spoke to Danny Cockton of Wood PLC, about challenges in this area, he responded, “If you’re aligning your travel strategy to your corporate messaging, then it’s very difficult for people to circumnavigate it in a moral way.”
So, whilst compliance is still a challenge, intertwining it with your values, corporate strategy and behaviors, makes it much harder to ignore. There are still huge challenges around articulating why policy is important to travelers, but companies like Danny’s are making great strides forward.
How do you define value?
Travel management can clearly assist with the challenges outlined above, but when it comes to value, what do we mean?
During our discussions with Danny, Mel and Alice, it became clear that for them — and many of their colleagues — value goes beyond cost savings.
Value ultimately is personal to every business — it’s dependent on your corporate strategy and beliefs. "We see travel as a strategic function. Travel underpins all three of our key strategic messages,” explained Danny. For Wood Plc, where Danny is VP Global Travel Services, they can underline the value of travel by tying it back to what the travel service brings to their organization.
"We see travel as a strategic function. Travel underpins all three of our key strategic messages."
Danny Cockman, VP Global Travel Services, Wood Plc
At the heart of all of this is communication. Understanding the value of travel management within your organization as a travel professional or travel booker is one thing. Communicating that value to stakeholders — the board, travelers, finance, HR, legal — is quite another. But once you can articulate the value of travel management, you’ll see a significant shift in the perception of travel.
Ground transportation as a pillar of travel management
We’ve taken the time to establish the importance and value of travel management, but one critical aspect of managed travel frequently gets overlooked: ground transportation.
There was no doubt about the vital nature of a solid ground transportation policy, with Alice Linley-Munro of Oil Spill Response even stating, “I’ve done my job wrong if someone needs to hail a cab.” However, there were several pain points, which seem to culminate in a fractured approach to the one element which could truly achieve the nirvana of a managed end-to-end journey.
Inconsistent service, hidden costs, safety and sustainability concerns were highlighted in the conversations with our travel experts as the most common pain points.
“We’ve got a lovely ground transportation policy, but it falls down because we don’t have a global supplier, so oftentimes we’re relying on the hotel and we don’t know what standards they’re working to,” stated Alice. Mel Quinn, of Travel Counsellors echoed these thoughts saying, “It’s what you don’t see that’s the problem.”
However, all agreed that using an approved supplier meant guaranteed service standards and confidence in quality. The transparency a named provider can give was seen as a huge benefit.
Lots of our Travel Counsellors use Blacklane - knowing there is consistency for our clients is critical.”
Mel Quinn, Director of Corporate Travel for Travel Counsellors
We know that as a sector, ground transportation is fragmented. This makes it hard to collect accurate data on cost, carbon footprint, and service. Bringing ground transportation into the managed travel mix removes several of these concerns.
“What you often don’t have visibility of is the ‘rounding up’ — where a taxi fare is £7, but the traveler rounds it up to £10,” said Mel. From a budget management perspective, this can add up over time with the number of travelers.
It’s not just transparency over budget where a managed ground transportation program can benefit businesses. There’s duty of care, sustainability, compliance, and wellbeing all wrapped up in there too, making it clear that the oft-overlooked ground transportation element of a travel program is indeed a key pillar to its overall success.
In summary
It was clear through our conversations that the value of a managed travel program far exceeds cheap deals and cost savings. It brings efficiency, safety, satisfaction and effectiveness to everyone involved in a journey — from the traveler themselves to all those who are involved behind the scenes making that journey happen.
Ground transportation, specifically taxi and chauffeur services, are often the last part of the puzzle when it comes to a fully managed, end-to-end travel program. But the tide is turning. The value of travel management is being articulated and understood more widely than ever before, and with this a growing acknowledgement of the role ground transportation plays.
At the start of this article we said the focus always came back to one thing: the traveler. Until we can incorporate ground transportation fully into our managed travel programs, there will be a journey gap we’re asking our travelers to navigate alone.
