GUEST BLOG: AN INSIGHT INTO BUSINESS TRAVEL TRENDS – DOES YOUR INVESTMENT PAY OFF?

When you pack your bags and head off on a trip, you often travel with the objective of scouting out new customers. But is that investment in travel paying off?

One of the key insights from our white paper 2015 European business travel and expense analysis, is that business travel spend in Europe is once again on the rise, although corporate travel managers are under more pressure than ever to demonstrate a return on investment on their travel spend.

The white paper, which is based on a telephone survey of travel managers who handle budgets ranging from less than €250,000 to over €50 million in 590 European companies, found that the main reason European corporations spend on travel is to acquire and develop clients. This is particularly relevant as 43% of the organisations surveyed intend to build on their activity abroad in the next three years, leading to an increase in their budget spend.

Paradoxically though, these companies view business travel spend as a cost rather than an investment, confirming the space in the market to improve the travel services these organisations are currently receiving.

Business travel spend can be broken down into two parts: the expenditure on the travel itself, which is known as the “direct cost”, or the expenditure on internal travel procedures and expense reimbursement, called the “indirect cost”. Controlling direct costs is one of the main priorities for those managing travel budgets, however the study details that 47% of corporations believe that direct cost-saving optimisation has reached a plateau and that they now need to focus on optimising their indirect costs.

This is where a global integrated travel and expense solution, such as Amadeus cytric Travel & Expense, steps in to meet corporations’ needs. Through this solution corporations can manage their travel programmes seamlessly from trip planning, to booking, accounting and reimbursement. An intuitive self-booking tool, together with a strong mobile app, is also a necessity to encourage adoption by employees so that they can be safely tracked while abroad – which was travel managers’ second priority in the survey.

Business travel certainly pays off when it’s supported by the right tools at home – and it’s clear from the study that the uptake of travel and expense solutions is a trend that’s set to continue. To discover further insights, download a copy of the 2015 European business travel and expense analysis white paper, and visit the Amadeus stand to discuss how we can help you shape the future of your travel and expense management programme.

This post was written by Florian Tinnus, Head of Corporate IT, Amadeus IT Group. Amadeus is exhibiting at the Business Travel Show in February. Register for your free

ticket now at www.businesstravelshow.com 

IT'S TIME TO GET YOUR TRAVELLERS IN ORDER

Driving compliance has been a critical issue for buyers for many years and, this year, it’s just as important. In fact, in the Business Travel Show annual buyers research it was cited as the second biggest challenge facing buyers in 2016, second only to cutting costs.

It’s an increasingly important and relevant issue for a number of reasons, but mostly because a) buyers are still under pressure to manage costs and get more for their organisations’ budgets and b) technology makes is super easy for travellers to book independently and ignore (either by accident or on purpose) policy, making it harder for buyers to manage cost, maximise supplier relationships and also monitor travellers, which is essential for duty of care.

Last year, 44 per cent of travel managers did not give travellers freedom to book their own travel compared to 39 per cent in 2014. Despite the clampdown, 86 per cent continue to go rogue, 10 per cent of these on a regular basis. This is a small increase on last year’s figure of 85 per cent.

The research also showed a marked difference in the compliance behaviour between SMEs and corporates. Buyers with budgets under £1 million are almost twice as likely to give buyers freedom book independently than those with more than £1m to spend: 71 per cent compared to 40 per cent. In 2014, these figures were 56 and 62, respectively, implying a tightening up of processes among corporates but a more laissez faire approach from SMEs.

 Table 1

	2015 £1m+	2015 £1m-	Aver-age	2014 £1m+	2014 £1m-	Aver-age	2013	2012
Do you give travellers freedom to book their own travel?
Yes							36	9
Yes, complete freedom	3	7	5	8	11	9
Yes, within policy guidelines	37	64	51	54	45	50
No	55	29	42	36	37	36
No, but we plan to	5	0	2	3	3	3

Are your travellers booking outside policy?	2015 £1m+	2015 £1m-	Aver-age	2014 £1m+	2014 £1m-	Aver-age
Regularly	17	4	10	8	8	8
Sometimes	75	78	76	80	74	77
Never	8	18	3	12	18	15

Table 2

It’s important to remember that while traveller management, wellbeing and duty of care are all increasingly important to buyers, their number one priority is efficiency – if they didn’t focus on managing costs and ROI, they wouldn’t be doing their job properly, and one of the key methods of achieving these is, of course, through driving compliance.

This post was written by David Chapple, event director, Business Travel Show, Europe’s leading event for buyers, managers and booking of business travel. The event is free to attend, taking place at Olympia Grand on 24-25 February 2016. http://goo.gl/F55mKX and features conference sessions tackling, explaining and discussing compliance issues for buyers at all levels.