*GUEST BLOG* Mix people and platforms to build a high-performance travel programme

No matter how many objectives you’ve mapped out for business travel in 2020, you’ve only got one goal: to run a successful corporate programme. I’m here to tell you that four managed travel strategies will get you there, no matter what success looks like for your company and programme.

1.       Engage your travellers.

2.       Take good care of them.

3.       Let data drive your decisions.

4.       Create a scalable programme.

These four strategies require both great people and innovative technology. That’s not news to travel buyers. A recent survey by The Beat shows 87% of travel buyers value professional and responsive agents above all else. But digital capabilities aren’t far behind: 85% of travel buyers say getting accurate and timely programme data from their travel management company is critical.

At BCD Travel we’re constantly thinking about how best to configure the talents of our people and the ingenuity of our technology to meet corporate travel programmes changing needs. Those four strategies are at the heart of everything we do.

Engage your travellers

Traveller engagement is about balancing business objectives with traveller-friendly booking options and frictionless trip experiences. The aim is to gain travellers trust, inform their choices and, ultimately, increase traveller productivity while cutting programme costs.

Strong engagement tactics treat travellers like the consumers they are—reaching them with targeted merchandising and informative messages that show up at the right time. Engagement influences travellers booking and spending decisions, and it gets results. In just three months, our client Finastra, a U.K.-based financial technology firm, saved more than US$650,000 through traveller engagement.

Take care of your travellers

The coronavirus, Brexit and the wildfires in Australia all serve as timely reminders that we can’t eliminate hazards faced by business travellers. But we can mitigate them with a modern risk-management model.

On the people side, providing travellers with emergency numbers answered 24/7/365 is invaluable in building traveller confidence that you’ll take care of them. But you can’t just wait for that call. You must leverage digitalisation to locate and communicate with travellers in a crisis.

Domino’s harnesses the capabilities of BCD’s DecisionSource®, TripSource® and SolutionSource® platforms to increase the safety of employees, whether they're traveling for business or commuting to the office. A bonus: Duty of care improvements boosted booking compliance by 21 percentage points in one year.

Drive better programme performance with data

Any decisions you make for your programme should be backed by data. Period. That’s why we care so much about the quality of the data we collect and consolidate. It’s also why we make booked data available to our clients in just 30 minutes. That ensures your dashboards and reports are accurate and actionable in the moment.

RELX, a global information and analytics firm headquartered in London, relies on BCD to consolidate third-party data worldwide. Hear from RELX’s travel leader about how high-quality data enables insights and innovation.

Build a tailored programme with scalable platforms

Your business is unique. Your travel programme should be, too. What if you could create a programme tailored to your company culture and policies? One that offers:

·        The best travel content available, at the best rates, from multiple sources

·        A consumer-grade traveller experience driven by profile-based recommendations and service

·        Reporting and intelligence that allows you to make quick, informed decisions

A platform approach makes all of this possible by allowing you to integrate and distribute new technologies, content and suppliers with agility.

BCD is a full-service digital provider. Over the past five years, we have put 35% to 40% of our earnings back into the company to invest in our people, technology and infrastructure. That enables us to build flexible, open platforms primed for what’s next; partner on industry advancements; and meet clients’ changing needs without ever losing sight of what really matters: running a successful programme that keeps your travellers moving safely and smoothly so your business grows.

I’d love to talk about how your travel programme is adapting to change. Meet me at the Business Travel Show, 26-27 February, Booth B320. See you there! Register for a free visitor pass www.businesstravelshow.com

This blog was posted by Heather Wright, vice president of Global Product Marketing at BCD Travel.

*EXCLUSIVE Q&A* Business Travel Wellbeing Community

Business Travel Wellbeing Community was started by a group of like-minded people who wanted to change business travel for the better, and who felt that the best way to go about this was to focus on helping people with their mental health, physical health, jet-lag, sleep management, recovery, thriving and calm mind-sets and cultural intelligence. 

We find out more in this exclusive Q&A with co-founders of Business Travel Wellbeing Community; Dr. Lucy Rattrie, John Lee, Katie Virtue and Matthew Holman.

What inspired you to co-found BTWC?

We are business travellers, love working in the industry and are passionate about people doing incredible work. We have been frustrated that wellness challenges are not being addressed, despite statistics and anecdotal reports emphasising the importance of wellbeing. We want to enable people, organisations, and the industry to flourish, so collectively founded a global community with no hidden agenda and a values-based purpose.

Thankfully, traveller wellbeing is a topic gaining momentum, confirmed with a 2019 report revealing 89 % of organisations polled will increase their approach to wellbeing in 2020. We realised the people who matter (that’s the business travellers btw!) were not being asked what they want, need, think, so felt the need for something different, radical, right.

What excites you most about BTWBC?

Harnessing our collective energy to make a difference in the industry, speaking as a single voice that puts people at the heart of actions! A central point will bring together opinions, insights, knowledge to address challenges faced, guide people, organisations, suppliers, and professional bodies in decision making and action, bringing sustainability and putting people first.

What will make traveller wellbeing front and centre for the next ten years?

The increasing impact to travel programmes, high turnover, absenteeism, increasing fears around risk (amongst other factors) are causing travel managers and HR to take ownership. We expect the travel-HR conversations to become status-quo, driven by internal advocates, willingness to allocate budget and resources to help travellers, and suppliers who up their game. It’s been accepted for a long time that people are the heart of HR, and we feel people will soon be viewed as the heart of travel management – taking a balanced view and stopping a dominant default to savings, compliance, cost etc. We expect a change in travel policies to become more people-centric, with a degree of flexibility to enhance wellbeing.

Building a global community around wellbeing is a crucial first step, but ultimately, the leaders will make a difference and be recognised as first movers, courageous in taking a holistic business metric view.  Wellbeing is not an easy topic as the KPIs and business metrics to follow can be difficult to measure or take time to emerge.  They don't appear in any profit and loss account, but they do have a considerable business impact.  Losing a talented employee to anxiety, stress or burn-out can cause a ripple across an organisation beyond just their direct salary. Some are leading the way and we’re looking forward to seeing how things develop.

Business Travel Wellbeing Community are exhibiting at BTS wellness retreat. Register for FREE now www.businesstravelshow.com

Q&A with Peter Frankental, Economic Relations Programme Director at Amnesty International

We found out a little more about Peter Frankental, Economic Relations Programme Director at Amnesty International, ahead of his Business Travel Show session - Is it time to introduce an ethical travel programme?

Work Amnesty International does?

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of ordinary people standing up for human rights. We undertake research and advocacy to help bring about a world in which everyone enjoys all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Amnesty’s work has expanded continuously from its foundation in 1961 by a British lawyer who wanted to advocate for the release of Prisoners of Conscience. Today the scope of our work includes torture, the death penalty, disappearances, the rights of indigenous peoples, refugees, women and those who identify themselves as LGBTI. We work on the frontline in many countries to bear witness to human rights violations and take testimonies from those affected. These form the basis of our global advocacy, which is directed at national, regional and inter-governmental levels.

While States are the main focus of Amnesty’s work, increasingly non-State actors come into play, including companies, warlords and armed opposition groups. 

My role

I work for the British Section of Amnesty International on the human rights impacts of corporations, which is a growing area of activity. Bad business behaviour, driven by economic interests and commercial gain, is a cause of injustice and suffering in many parts of the world.  Even in the UK, moderns forms of slavery have been documented in the construction, care and hospitality industries, in fruit picking and car-washing, and in the processing of fish and meat.

How does the topic of human rights tie into the corporate world?

National and international laws have not kept pace with the power and global reach of today’s companies. States remain unwilling or unable to hold companies to account. That is why we are calling for legislation to create a new corporate duty to prevent human rights and environmental abuses. Such laws would require companies to take action to prevent harm arising from their global products, services, operations, investments and value chains. This is known as Human Rights Due Diligence. It is a concept embodied in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights which were adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011. These have the support of governments, industry bodies, trade unions and civil society organisations.

Could that apply to business travel too?

Any form of travel could put individuals and communities at risk?   The hotels in which business travellers are staying could be built on land from which local people have been forcibly evicted in violation of their rights. The water consumed by hotel guests, including for watering golf courses, could be depriving local farmers of their livelihoods. The staff serving business travellers, in particular chambermaids, could be victims of modern forms of slavery. The aircraft on which they travel could contain refugees suffering panic attacks as a consequence of being deported to countries where they would be in danger.  Or the hotels they stay in could be locations where children are sexually exploited. In reality, there are numerous situations where business travel could contribute to human rights violations or be linked to these in some way.

Why should Business Travel Show attendees carve out time for your session?

Forewarned is forearmed!  The sands are shifting rapidly with regard to business ethics, which means that companies that ignore the human rights context of their operations could be snared by issues they weren’t aware of.  The more that norms of acceptable business behaviour change, the more risk to companies that take a ‘business as usual’ approach.  

Peter’s session – Is it time to introduce an ethical travel programme? takes place on Tuesday 25^th February, 13.30-15.00. Register for a FREE visitor pass and join us at Olympia London www.businesstravelshow.com

60 Seconds With… Earle Thomas, associate director – procurement manager, Buro Happold

What’s keeping you awake at night?
Traveller tracking system accuracy and reliability

Why? 
Because the Duty of Care for our staff is my top-priority.

What is the most important thing you do to look after your travellers' wellbeing? 
The implementation of our traveller tracking system through our TMC. We also provide a great deal of support and ‘local knowledge’ via various media and networking.

Is it possible to have an ethical travel programme? 
I believe so but it requires mandates from the top (with consequence) and full engagement across the business to make it work.

And what would it look like? 
Well, it would need to have simple high-level drivers that users can easily see themselves supporting with their actions.

How 'ethically conscious' is your travel programme? 
It tries to be, but we lack mandate with consequence. We also rely on market actions, too, from the airlines, for example.

Should air miles be banned for encouraging unnecessary travel? 
No. Corporate air miles are a benefit to the company. Justification for a trip should be robust enough to manage unnecessary trip requests, but we could use them to carbon off-set.

How has Brexit impacted your travel programme?
It’s actually had very little impact as the EU travel is only a small part of our programme.

What's the best thing about travelling on business? 
Being able to work with fewer distractions.

And what's the worst? 
Definitely time away from my family.

Why do you attend the Business Travel Show? 
To keep up to date with market developments and keep my network current.

Earle Thomas, Associate Director - Procurement at Buro Happold, is on the Business Travel Show Advisory Board making sure our content in bang on every year. Register for a free visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* 3 ways to jump-start travel programme sustainability

Managing corporate travel to increase sustainability has rapidly morphed from a feel-good nicety to an absolute necessity.

Seven in 10 travel managers in Europe now think it’s important to give travellers sustainable choices, according to recent research from the Global Business Travel Association and SAP Concur.

At BCD Travel, we see green travel gaining momentum in 2020 and beyond. But our commitment to sustainability has been embedded in our business practices for more than a decade. We’re proud of our leadership role in the industry and the work we do every day to help companies of all sizes reduce the environmental impact of business travel. We encourage travel buyers to get started by applying proven programme management strategies to their sustainability goals. Here are three ways you can do just that—ordered by level of effort.

1. Factor sustainability into supplier selection.

This is the easiest to-do because you probably already consider sustainability when evaluating agency, air, hotel and car-hiring partners. But plan to expand: Three-quarters of travel managers say they’ll focus even more on sourcing with eco-minded suppliers over the next two years, according to the GBTA-SAP Concur research.

Your challenge is to look beyond table-stakes qualifications, like hotels that ask guests to reuse linens. To make real progress, you’ll need to seek out suppliers with innovative approaches to reducing environmental impact. A recent favourite of mine was Dutch airline KLM’s centennial anniversary “Fly Responsibly” campaign, which offered concrete ways to reduce the environmental impact of flights.

Ask your travel management company what they’re seeing in the marketplace that’s new and next when it comes to sustainability.

2. Guide travellers toward more sustainable choices.

Using Traveller Engagement^TM tactics to boost sustainability is simple because your business travellers want to reduce their impact. Over the past year, 58% of travel managers received traveller requests for more eco-friendly trip options, according to GBTA and SAP Concur.

Plus, you’ve got more ways than ever to reach your travellers right as they’re making trip decisions with environmental consequences. Use merchandising via your online booking tool to guide travellers toward lower-impact (and often lower-cost) options. Mobile apps like TripSource® allow you to remind travellers to make sustainable choices, like taking public transportation.

3. Leverage collaboration technology to reduce nonessential trips.

Video-enabled collaboration tools are getting better and more ubiquitous every day. In 2020, try incorporating them into your programme as non-travel offerings in ways that won’t hurt your bottom line.

Here’s the rationale. In-person pitching is 34 times more likely to seal the deal, as the Harvard Business Review reports. So, your salespeople will always need to go on business trips. But internal meetings are ripe for reduction that won’t harm revenue. A directed virtual collaboration strategy for internal meetings enabled one of our clients to significantly reduce environmental impact by avoiding over 900 trips. The company also saved US$5.5 million and boosted productivity by redirecting over 15,000 hours of employee travel time.

At BCD, we’re incorporating supplier sustainability, eco-oriented engagement strategies and virtual collaboration tools into our newly launched Sustainable Collaboration offering. It also provides solutions for more complex areas, such as measuring and reporting on sustainability and implementing a carbon-offsetting programme.

I’d love to talk more about Sustainable Collaboration and hear how you’re enabling conscious travel at the upcoming Business Travel Show, 26-27 February 2020, at the Olympia London. Register for a free visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com and please stop by Booth B320 for a chat. See you there!

This blog was posted by Tony McGetrick, BCD Travel’s director of sales for U.K. & Ireland.

Guest Blog: More room on top – how the right content can drive savings even in a mature travel programme

Your travel programme is mature. Compliance levels are high, preferred suppliers won’t give any more ground on rate, terms or availability and traveller feedback is generally positive. So, what can you do to drive more savings, make processes more efficient and keep stakeholders happy?

One area where you can find more room on top is ‘content’.

To answer all the questions a traveller or booker may have, any booking channel must provide the right breadth of information and depth of supplier choice. Millennial travellers know more about, and are therefore more demanding of, travel choices than previous generations. They also expect the same quality of booking experience as the OTAs provide for their leisure travel. In the social media age, traveller feedback can be more powerful than a cheap rate.

Good content stops the buyer from looking elsewhere and benefits every stakeholder.

The supplier’s product is presented in the most compelling way; the booker or traveller has the reassurance of information that enables informed purchasing decisions to be made, whilst the travel manager drives greater policy compliance.

So, what does good content look like? After ensuring that the choice of preferred suppliers meets travellers’ needs in terms of location, amenities and personal security, the essentials include images that reflect the personality and features of a hotel and its different room types; professionally-translated descriptions (where required), plus detailed information about facilities, services and location, room availability and cancellation policy.

Content also includes NDC (New Distribution Capability), the IATA-sponsored supported programme for the industry adoption of a new, XML-based data transmission standard to enable travel management companies and online booking tools to access airline ancillary services and more dynamic airline pricing.

We have been working closely with our technology partners and key airline suppliers for the last two years on new ways to integrate airline content into our existing booking platforms. We will soon be announcing our NDC development roadmap and are proud to be playing a key part in shaping the roadmap for NDC in the TMC space for the benefit of our customers.

NDC brings opportunities to improve traveller services by ensuring their programmes benefit from the changes.

This blog was posted by Alexander Blunt, Head of Hotel Supplier Relations at FCM Travel Solutions who will be taking part in the Business Travel Show conference panel session ‘Policy – why it’s time for a complete re-think’ at 1600 hours on Wednesday 21^st February