The Business Travel Magazine December/January 2018/19

TECHNOLOGY
[ TRAVELLER EXPERIENCE ]
DATA FROM ALL DIRECTIONS
Corporates would be wise to tackle their data sources head on and put
traveller experience at the heart of their programmes, says Linda Fox
An interesting
report
emerged
from ACTE and BCD
Travel recently
saying that
despite the tons
of data that the
corporate travel
community has
access to, the metrics
used to determine the
success of a trip are not
necessarily effective.
According to the report, travel managers
continue to use decade-old factors such
as spend and savings data and booking
statistics to measure the return-oninvestment
of trips. And this is despite how
much technology and booking channels
have advanced in recent years as well as
the fact that there are newer and more
effective ways to help measure ROI.
The Quality Management in Corporate
Travel study, which surveyed about 300
travel managers, reveals that while 87%
of them felt it’s important to measure
traveller wellbeing, only 21% are actually
using it as a metric.
Measuring the traveller engagement with
a TMC or travel department is also
highlighted as important by 90% of travel
managers, but only 37% use it.
Many an airline, travel
management company or hotel
boss has talked of the power
of data at any number of
conferences in recent
months, but what's the
point if you can’t
harness it?
Thankfully, the chat
isn't all lip service.
A number of
travel technology
companies and TMCs have launched data
tools in recent months. Some such as
Egencia’s Analytics Studio are about helping
corporates understand and analyse their
data to uncover patterns and correlations
– all with a view to making savings.
Similarly, CWT Travel Consolidator aims
to capture every part of company’s travel
and expense spend to help travel
managers make more informed decisions.
The TMC says that algorithms within the
tool consolidate and clean-up the data –
for accuracy purposes – which is gathered
from air, hotel and transport spend as well
as expense and HR data.
Also flexing its data muscles is Travelport.
The company has joined forces with IBM
on a data platform called Travel Manager.
The platform uses artificial intelligence to
help corporate travel managers and their
agency partners increase spend visibility
and improve efficiency.
It uses Travelport and IBM data as well
as data from other sources such as social
media. The company says the technology
will enable the corporate travel community
to analyse the impact on spend of booking
travel a week in advance.
With annual corporate travel spend set
to rise from $1.3trillion annually now to
$1.6trillion by 2020, travel managers and
TMCs need to get a grip on their data.
As the ACTE/BCD report highlights, the
industry could benefit from following other
industries such as online retail and put
the customer experience – or traveller
experience – at the heart of everything.
While 87% of travel
managers feel it’s
important to measure traveller
wellbeing, only 21% are actually
using it as a metric”
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