The Business Travel Magazine April/May 2019

ARRIVALS
THE KNOWLEDGE
How to...
Boost traveller satisfaction
Networking platform LinkedIn was
seeking ways to boost the satisfaction of
its business travellers. Read on to
discover how it went about it.
THE BACKGROUND
LinkedIn recognised that
traveller satisfaction should
be at the forefront of
thinking for travel
procurement today, using
travel policy as a carrot to
attract new talent.
Around 8,000 LinkedIn
employees take regular
business trips, the bill
for which exceeds $40million. But with
LinkedIn's travel policy being just four years
old there were some kinks to be ironed out.
“LinkedIn has a 'non-mandate culture'
where employees take ownership of their
actions,” says LinkedIn's Global Travel and
Event Operations Manager, Leslie Hadden.
“While there is a travel policy, it's basically
just a guide and it wasn't always clear which
suppliers travellers should use. And when
they used their own alternatives it could cost
the company more.”
Critically, however, all these issues led to a
situation where only 64% of LinkedIn's
travelling community were satisfied with
their experiences.
THE RESEARCH
The first step towards
solving a problem is to
make sure you fully
understand it, so LinkedIn
needed to know who its
travellers were, why they
travel, and what information, services,
and amenities they needed to
best achieve their business
travel goals.
To this end, the company launched a
survey and asked all their travelling
employees to complete it. Once it had the
data, LinkedIn could break down the
various issues their people were having and
begin devising solutions.
“Segregating the groups and really
listening gave us a very good understanding
of our travellers,” says Hadden. “We
learned that 44% of LinkedIn travellers are
in sales, products and services who travel
often and care about their budget.
“But in addition to the road warriors,
there are travel arrangers, new travellers,
executives and people in the finance
department who have an interest in travel.
And we learned that travellers were
interested in exploring new accommodation
and travel options – like Airbnb and Uber –
when they were on the road.”
THE SOLUTION
LinkedIn set about
addressing each issue. A
new platform, TravelIn,
allowed the company to
deliver travel messaging
more effectively than
before. In addition, the
inSider platform also
allowed messages to be shared socially
between the company's travellers. The
in-house booking tool was
streamlined
and upgraded with new guidelines and
advice, with satisfaction in booking trips
rising 13% as a result. Within 18 months,
overall traveller satisfaction in the LinkedIn
travel experience had risen to 84%, with
reports of dissatisfaction or extreme
dissatisfaction down to just 4%.
THE CONCLUSION
Traveller satisfaction is
going to continue to be a
hot topic as we move
through 2019. LinkedIn has
shown that by simply
listening, things can be set back on course.
“People are starting to really love our
programme. They're noticing that we're
communicating with them and connecting
with them,” says Hadden. “My goal is to
make travellers happier and more
productive on the road and traveller
engagement is at the heart of that.”
• LinkedIn's Global Travel Manager,
Leslie Hadden, will be hosting a session
on Traveler Satisfaction: Finding The
Balance Between Experience, Productivity
and Cost at ProcureCon Travel 2019, taking
place in May at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas,
Henderson, May 14-15. For more
information see procurecontravel.com
ADEOLU ELETU
THEBUSINESSTRAVELMAG.COM
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