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such as the one already formed between Worldchoice, the Travel Trust Association and Midconsort, which includes more 1500 independent travel agents. Changes in the principals’ (airlines, hotels, car rental companies) policies mainly in the reduction if not elimination of commissions (Bray & Cohen, 2002) and their attempt for dis-intermediation through proprietary websites (Cline, 2001; Marcussen, 1999; Middleton & Clarke, 2001) resulted in many BTM agencies to review their pricing structure and charge their customers fees for their services working now on behalf of them as negotiators for best possible deals rather than being a distributor of the principal (Mason, 2002). Also instead of concentrating only on big corporate clients -business travel market follows an acute form of the 80/20 rule with more than 80% of international business travel bookings made by less than 20% of corporate clients (Mintel 2000)- BTM agencies are increasingly getting interested in the SME market segment and launch dedicated services such as the CorporateChoice by Worldchoice. Increasingly, these travel agencies are using -in various degrees- information and communication technology (ICT) and the Internet to streamline their business process (Bray, 2002). A further development in this area is the emergence of corporate webenabled self-booking systems by-passing the traditional BTM agencies (Del Rosso, 2001). The benefits of the ‘e-transformation’ of corporate purchasing have been widely discussed in the generic literature (see, for example, Attaran & Attaran, 2002; Cooper-Jones & Macklin, 2002; Ovans, 2000) but have received little attention in the business travel literature. The first step in understanding how the Internet has impacted this area would be to investigate how corporate travel managers employ the Internet in purchasing. Towards this end, the present study addresses three research questions: RQ1: What are the perceived benefits offered by the online BTM service provision and under which conditions can these be achieved RQ2: What are the benefits that corporate travel managers in an online BTM service provision and what are the areas would they like to see improved (RQ2a) What organisational, personal and environmental variables influence corporate travel managers’ propensity to use online BTM services (RQ2b) 2 Business Travel Market and the Internet Technological developments such as the proliferation of the Internet and of e- commerce have also had an impact on BTM. Price transparency has increased the bargaining power of customers and new online intermediaries such as Expedia Corporate Travel have entered in this market and many BTM agencies have developed a “clicks-and-mortar” presence (Palmer & McCole, 1999; Buhalis, 2003). A challenge for BTM agencies is the emergence of business travel e-procurement solutions such as GetThere in the US or KDS and I:fao in Europe that have been
developed by independent software companies. Similarly, GDS companies have developed their own booking solutions, such as Highwire (Galileo), Corporate.Res (Sabre) and Trip Manager (Worldspan). These web-based BTM systems enable companies to take advantage of special business fares and at the same time, they provide controls to track savings and prevent abuses (Bray, 2002). The benefits offered by the automation and the web-enablement of business processes has been widely discussed in both generic and tourism literature (see for example, Dutta & Segev, 1999; Brewton & Kingseed, 2001; Werthner, H. & Klein, S. 1999; Cline, 2001). The e-transformation of BTM service provision however, offers a series of business travel-specific benefits to corporate clients that have not been recorded by the extant literature. On the other hand, these benefits may be achieved only under certain conditions. RQ1 by adopting a descriptive approach, aim at exploring these benefits and the possible limitations of the online BTM. This will be achieved by recording the views of key BTM suppliers. Then, RQ2a will explore the importance corporate travel managers attach to these benefits or limitations of the online service provision. Several models have been developed in order to explain IT innovation adoption. In the case of online BTM the authors have chosen the model proposed by Gallivan (2001). The model suggests that there are three main categories of factors that can influence the adoption of an IT innovation at user level (i.e., corporate travel manager’s level): a) managerial interventions, which include the actions taken and resources made available by managers to expedite end user adoption including mandating usage (Leonard-Barton & Deschamps, 1988; Agarwal, 2000), b) subjective norms describing individuals' beliefs about the expectations of relevant others regarding their own secondary adoption behaviour (Saga & Zmud, 1994), and c) facilitating conditions that include other factors that can make the adoption more likely (Orlikowski, 1993). 3 Methodology The researchers needed to first clearly define the term “business travel” in the context of the study, as there is not a universally agreed definition (De Sèze, 2002). The definition of “business travel” proposed by Davidson and Cope (2003:3) was adopted in this research, excluding this way all travel made for conferences and meetings, exhibitions, incentives and corporate hospitality, which the authors define as “business tourism”. In the first phase of the study, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with nine major players in the supply side (classified as traditional ‘bricks-andmortar’, ‘clicks-and-mortar’ and ‘pure-play’ online travel agents as well as travel procurement software developers) in order to map the benefits and limitations of
Page 1: Online Business Travel Management:
Page 5 and 6: Continuous connectivity (24/7/365)
Page 7 and 8: high percentage of their travel boo
Page 9 and 10: travel market expertise, or perceiv

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