*GUEST BLOG* Anticipating Change: Effective Business Travel Management in an Age of Uncertainty

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is that in managing international travel, we need to expect the unexpected.  The shifting of political tides, increasingly common natural disasters and quickly implemented travel bans have certainly kept us on our toes.   

Immigration and travel have moved up the political agenda.  Protectionism in in vogue and politicians the world over are driving huge changes in policy which are impacting the way that business must manage their international travel.

In the United States we have seen significant restrictions on the Visa Waiver Program, including prohibitions by the Trump administration on an increasing number of nationalities.  In the United Kingdom, Brexit has created anxiety around the future ease of travel between Britain and the EU.  Most recently, politics have taken a backseat to public health in driving travel restrictions as we have witnessed hastily arranged travel bans implemented with the aim of curbing the spread of coronavirus.

So how do we stay ahead in this environment and ensure that we have a proactive policy approach designed to create effective crisis management strategies?  Through experiences over the past few year of this constantly changing landscape we have learned some crucial lessons.  Below are some measures that companies should take today to help to better prepare their business for this new, changing environment. 

Seek effective partnerships

Given the multitude of challenges in the industry today, companies seeking to remain agile and forward thinking are partnering with experts to help monitor and mitigate risk.  Embedding this expertise through strategic partnerships will help to save costs and create a more reassured travel population overall. 

Businesses should not write policy on the basis of media reporting.  As we have seen recently with reporting on Brexit, conflicting information in the media can cause greater confusion in difficult times.  Strategic partnerships will help guide you by providing advice that you can rely on to help you to achieve some stability when there is uncertainty.

Know your current policy and work toward further development

Understand what the policy is around business travel bookings and ensure that the policies in place are followed.  Your ability to determine the potential business impact of changes and to respond quickly is highly dependent on the quality of your policy.  If there is no central policy for booking travel and governance to ensure that the policy is being adhered to, individuals could be booking and expensing travel outside of the company policy which can complicate identifying those impacted when there is a change or crisis. 

Know your people and populations

At the most basic level, it is essential to know who your business travellers are.  This may seem like quite a simple task, but it can be challenging to track without good governance in a business travel policy.  Knowing your travellers also means knowing where they tend to travel to, what types of activities they generally conduct when travelling to these countries and what visas or work permits they hold. 

Know the pitfalls

Compliance with local immigration rules is crucial to effectively managing your business traveller population.  Running afoul of local immigration rules could cause unwanted exposure to the company, your employees and potentially even your clients.  One way to manage crisis is to avoid it in the first place with good policy around business traveller compliance.

Finally, it is important to be flexible and alert. In this modern world that we live in, it is impossible to plan for all eventualities.  We must remain educated on the landscape that we face, maintain excellent corporate policies with good governance and partner with providers that we trust.  These strategies will help us to prepare us as best as possible to face the next inevitable curves in the road ahead.

This blog was written by Jennifer Fackelman, Senior Manager with Fragomen LLP who will be exhibiting with Nomadic at the Business Travel Show on the 26^th and 27^th of February.  Come by Stand: B248 to meet the Nomadic team and attend a mini education session on Wednesday at 14:00.

Register for FREE www.businesstravelshow.com

Photography by Nandan Prabhu Photography

*GUEST BLOG* How SMEs can enhance employee retention though a traveller-centric travel policy

Ninety-nine per cent of the time, travelling for business isn’t fun. Anybody who has ever travelled for business will contest. It can be stressful, long, tiring and lonely, but seldom fun. These days there is so much businesses can do to make sure the travel element of an employee’s role isn’t having a detrimental impact on them - and in turn, on the organisation.

There is so much focus these days on employee wellbeing and with good reason. As the most important asset an organisation has, negative impact on employees can have an adverse effect to the business as a whole, that is felt particularly strongly in SMEs where workforces are inevitably smaller. Businesses are becoming ever more aware of the need to take care of their employees for the greater good of them as people and in terms of their impact on business performance.

It isn’t unrealistic to think if people aren’t happy in their roles, they’ll leave. Gone are the days of staying in the same job for twenty years. If there are factors that negatively impact on your life and lifestyle, you can move on, and find something that you have a much more positive experience with.

Building a travel policy that puts the traveller at the centre of that and considers the traveller experience as well as their needs and wants first, can be a great thing in keeping these travellers – a business’s employees – happy.

At taptrip, that’s exactly what we try help businesses achieve. We offer an omnichannel, easy-to-use solution for travellers that takes some of the pain out of travel and frees up more time for some of the fun stuff. We try take that one step further in not only taking away the chore of booking travel, or filing expenses, with AI machine learning, the more a traveller uses the taptrip app, the better it gets to know their interests and tastes, and can make suggestions to nearby attractions, events, even restaurant recommendations. It puts the traveller back in control of their travel and means any down time they get when travelling for business, doesn’t need to be spent inside the four walls of their hotel room.

With every five bookings, it also rewards the traveller with things like free coffees and discounts at various retail brands, or a traveller can decide to offset these rewards against their carbon footprint by donating them to a relevant charity that plants trees and works towards more sustainable business travel.

There are so many ways that a traveller-centric travel policy can impact in a positive way for employees and that knock on is felt across an organisation. If employees are happy, they’re less likely to look elsewhere for employment meaning a positive effect on employee retention is almost a certainty. Employees are less likely to suffer with burn-out and it can reduce the number of sick days taken too.

There’s no doubt that it can also create a desirability factor in attracting new talent as well – if the perception of employee happiness in an organisation is strong, and the business’s policies put its employees first, people are more likely to want to work with that business.

We know that for a lot of SMEs – some 92% in fact - are unfamiliar with travel policies; establishing them, enforcing them, evaluating them, and this creates an unnecessary amount of work in booking and managing employee travel. It means the booking process is disparate, fragmented and causes so much more hassle than necessary for both the traveller and the organisation – and inevitable costs the business more money too. With a better, traveller-centric solution this cost saving is felt by the organisation and allows for better visibility on travel spend as a whole. It’s a win-win for the traveller and the organisation they work for.

Neil Ruth, chief commercial officer, taptrip. taptrip are exhibiting at this year's Business Travel Show, register for FREE and visit them on stand B3204 www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* NDC: Why Consumer-Driven Content is King

In this blog, we'll look at why consumer-driven content is the key to driving NDC adoption, and lay out the steps needed to ensure that the promise of a truly rich and differentiated NDC content that benefits business travellers is realised.

Let’s start with the obvious: Massive investments are currently being made by all industry players to make NDC a reality. It is therefore only prudent to ensure that this capital is put to its intended use, which begins and ends with delivering content that the customer not only needs and wants, but also benefits from seeing.

So what does this rich new content look like?

To date, the enhancements being considered revolve around providing a consumer-grade user experience, access to new bundling opportunities and ancillaries, such as early boarding, preferred seating, and special meals, and adding personalized content.

These are the types of services that can be enabled through NDC, and the benefits can only be realised through industry-wide collaboration that puts consumers’ interests at the centre.

Using a test and learn approach, driven by corporate traveller feedback, ensures that the industry is building a product and capability that consumers want and can use – every step of the way.

After all, only the consumer can really certify the value of NDC-enabled content, based on its ability to address the cost, convenience, choice, and service objectives that are lacking in the current distribution model.

When the industry solves these objectives with the end traveller in mind, it will naturally result in the kind of demand that will lead to the mass adoption necessary to make NDC succeed - not only for the industry, but also (and most importantly), for the benefit of business travellers.

So, let’s assume that we now have the ability to distribute content that meets a clear and compelling need of the corporate travel community. There is still one final step to realise the potential of this industry-transforming technology standard – and that’s display.

We’ll cover modernising the way business travellers and agents consume this rich content to make an informed purchasing decision in the third and last blog in this three-part series.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions on NDC overall, and, in the meantime – remember: content will always reign supreme.

Blog written by Erik Magnuson, Vice President, Air Distribution Capabilities, CWT.
CWT is exhibiting at Business Travel Show, register for free and visit the team on stand B230 www.businesstravelshow.com

GUEST BLOG: A medium fish in a big pond: managing a midmarket travel programme

Sometimes it seems like the ‘global giants’ take all the focus in the business travel industry.

The industry as a whole is laser-focused on large multinational clients who spend USD 100M+ across multiple global markets. Client panels at industry events mainly feature managers of these more substantial programmes, where it's hard to know what applies to you as a midmarket client.

So what's a mid-market travel programme manager to do? Where do you start when looking at global consolidation? Where should your key focus areas be, and which elements are more relevant to the ‘global giants’?

What is a mid-sized global client?

Generally, the industry categorises mid-market clients as companies spending between 20M - 60M USD on global transient business travel in 3+ markets, usually with meetings and events as an additional spend line.

Where should your focus be?

When we look at mid-market global consolidation at Radius Travel, we focus on three key areas:

1)    The user experience

User experience is vital to driving internal adoption and ensuring users make the right choices for the business.

Here’s what to consider:

• The user journey – your process should make life easier for bookers
• Presenting bookers with not only the best options but also the right options, in line with company policy
• Addressing security needs, such as traveller tracking
• Rates and products sourced covering all requirements
• Everything in one place: offline/online capabilities and technology that is supported by a 24-hour team

With an enjoyable user experience, travellers will come on board willingly, stay within policy and make good choices for the business.

Consider stakeholder engagement. Needs across all the departments and people connected to a global travel programme are often varied and specific to each area. Bookers, the procurement team, regional departmental heads, human resources and finance (to name a few!) will all require the system to work for them and solve their specific needs.

By actively encouraging early stakeholder engagement through discovery sessions, you can understand the pain points of each area, whilst also making sure the business understands the overall aims of implementing a centralised system. If you get this right, you can hugely increase policy compliance and adoption rates across your organisation.

2)    Global leverage

Consider the return of investment of your programme. Does your TMC have:

• expert rate sourcing capabilities
• global reach
• a vision to grow and incorporate value-added services when the time is right (such as integrating meetings & events)

If your TMC has global leverage, they will tick all of these boxes, and ensure you are investing with a TMC with the resource, scale and expertise to maximise your global opportunity.

Savings optimisation and value add statements should provide you with a clear picture of where the return will be driven from for your organisation. Be sure you have a clear overview of the value you will gain, and that the programme is not only ready for current requirements but is also ‘future-proofed’.

3)    Overall programme costs

There is a lot of choice out there when determining a travel programme, so take the time to understand which solution best fits your needs. Your TMC should provide a clear picture of the pros and cons of industry technology, payment forms, and travel management interaction.

Ask yourself the following questions when determining what will fit best for your organisation:

• What are you investing in?
• Which online booking tool suits your needs?
• Are you better suited with a best-in-market solution or a more standardised system?

Reporting is often one of the first requirements on a global consolidator’s list. Reporting tools should provide both a snapshot of your global business spend, but also a more in-depth overview for more informed business decisions.

A dedicated global account manager will be vital to analysing your data and providing recommendations. Once you have the basics right, you can look at additional technology such as repricing tools and data analytics, which will provide further opportunities to optimise a travel programme.

Overall, these three key areas will provide you with a strong foundation to implement a travel programme that drives value and grants transparency, and allow you to focus on driving meaningful actions, avoiding cost, and managing traveller behaviour.

This blog was posted by Greg Mannix, Director of Global Sales, EMEA for Radius Travel, who are exhibiting at the Business Travel Show next week in BTS Hub D. Please register for your free visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com.