If corporate travel falls under your purview, you’re probably wondering whether the solution your company uses is actually doing you any favours. After all, if your company is paying someone else to manage business travel, you don’t want to end up doing their work for them. Here are the key signs that your corporate travel solution just isn’t working out.
1. You have little or no visibility over your spend
An efficient travel program is built on information, and the more your travel partner provides you with, the better. But that’s not all; information isn’t worth much if you don’t have the ability to interpret it. A good travel agency won’t just provide reports and data, they’ll guide you through their findings and point out your biggest opportunities. If you had access to more detail related to where your corporate travellers stay on their trips, for instance, you could potentially profit from negotiated rates with certain hotel chains. If your business travel solution isn’t equipping you with visibility over and understanding of your spend, something’s missing.
2. You’re spending too much of your time on travel
Are travel program issues encroaching on your other tasks? That’s a crystal-clear sign that your travel solution isn’t doing what it should. Whether it’s with a dedicated traveller support team, automated platforms, or both, a corporate travel agency exists to take travel program management into their own hands, freeing yours up to do your actual job! If you find yourself wasting time on things your travel partner promised they’d handle, it might be time to get a new one.
3. Your travellers aren’t happy
This might seem obvious, but traveller satisfaction is one of the most important indicators of a travel program’s success (or failure). Despite this, only 61% of employers have a method of measuring traveller happiness. Use their opinions as a resource! It might be a good idea to put a survey together, and distribute it to frequent travellers. Ask both for their level of satisfaction, and for what specifically isn’t working for them. If your travel partner isn’t able to address your travellers’ complaints, they might not deserve your business. And remember: a happy traveller is a compliant traveller.
4. Online adoption is low
Convincing travellers to book their arrangements online often results in significant savings. For travellers to want to do so, there are two critical factors: first, that they receive adequate training on how to use the online booking tool (OBT), and second, that the OBT itself be intuitive and properly supported. According to a recent study, almost 50% of corporate travellers prefer to book their arrangements themselves, meaning a bad OBT or incomplete training might be enough to scare your travellers off. A good travel solution will have both of those points covered. If yours isn’t doing the trick, a change might be in order.
5. Multiple travellers are booking their arrangements independently
Working with a corporate travel agency to manage your program is a wise choice, saving you both time and money. That being said, your travellers have to use it for any of that to be true. To encourage them to do so, it’s absolutely imperative that you have a clearly outlined travel and expense policy, and that you promote compliance through your internal lines of communication. If you’ve already taken these steps, the agency you’re with might not be structuring their service in a way which encourages compliance. Time for a switch!
