If You’re Budgeting For Travel Costs In 2015, Go For Neutral To Single Digit Increases Across All Regions

American Express Global Business Travel released its 2015 pricing outlook last week. In the outlook, Amex forecasts worldwide air, hotel and rental car pricing "to be neutral to slightly higher across all regions," with variance across geographic markets and supplier categories. On tap for the United States are low-to-mid-single-digit percentage increases in each of the three major travel supplier categories. Europe, meanwhile, will see a mix of increases and decreases. Asia pricing should be up, but at a slower growth rate compared with recent years, while Latin America projections range from modest declines to modest gains. Amex cited an "improving economy" and "capacity discipline" by airlines in North America as it projected airfares in the region would rise across the board next year: Short-haul business-class fares are projected to grow year over year between 2 percent and 6 percent, long-haul business class will be up between 1 percent and 4 percent, short-haul economy is projected to increase between 2 percent and 5 percent and long-haul economy should be up no more than 3 percent.

North American hotel rates, meanwhile, are projected to be "buoyed by favorable economic growth, increasing demand, and a lack of new inventory," according to Amex. "After an extended period of relative weakness, hotels are looking to capitalize on favorable market dynamics to increase profitability." In North America, average mid-range hotel rates are expected to increase up to 6 percent year over year, with upper-tier rates up between 3.5 percent and 7 percent from 2014 levels. Car rental base rate growth in North America should be more modest, rising no more than 1 percent, according to Amex, which added that it is "likely that rental companies will work with their customers to keep their corporate rates generally flat next year."

For more information, guidance, or a deeper dive into data for planning, let us know how we can help.

Are You Managing Travel or Managing Trips or Both?

“Begin with the end in mind” is one of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This should be the mantra for any major initiative. In travel procurement we often run into organizations who focus on managing travel (the line item) because the buyer of travel is driving the decisions. That person is often the Travel Manager, CFO, or similar. In other instances the decision of what to do (or more often what not to do) is based on the end user, or the travelers. In my experience exponential value is created when we are working with an organization trying to find the ying and yang (balance) between benefits that the organization should want and expect in managing T&E, and benefits that travelers should want and expect. Make sure you know what both sides can expect and add that to what you should expect to determine your goals and objectives with balance and consideration for both sides. It’s a good time for an assessment for the coming year. Then in understanding the potential and this desire for balance, filter requests and comments through these objectives before making any decisions. Here are some examples:

 

• Supplier display and speed - Many public travel sites recognize what the traveler has bought before and limit the display to what the traveler is likely to buy again. That’s a happier and quicker experience for the traveler, but does your organization want the buying decision to be strictly the preference of the traveler or the best available unbiased options every time?
• Traveler Tracking- I have heard travelers say that they don’t really want people to know where they are all the time. I have seen lawyers for companies explain that knowing where their travelers are all the time is a corporate responsibility.
• User interface- Many times advertisements for cruises, tours, packages, offers, and other products make sites look more exciting and user friendly, but are these advertisements simply distractions to your corporate travel policies? Yeah sure business travel buying technologies do need some updating but so does your CRM and ERP. These are all tools focusing on the job at hand versus an experience. What is important?
• Supplier preference- Is it the travelers preference that is the driver or the organization’s preference for the greater good of all that should be driver of the buying decision?

As in anything balance is required.

Why Your Superhero Road Warriors Need a Sidekick

Many travelers feel that they can make travel arrangements on their own outside of the company system just as well as the travel provider. Sure, making travel arrangements isn't difficult but by making these arrangements through a Travel Management Company they receive sidekicks (Batman has Robin and the Butler) that will help them defeat evil villains like Money-Waster, Time Cruncher, Plan Changer, Control Resister. Here are a few things they can do when they have such a sidekick that are good reminders of the benefits to them of working within your travel procurement system (Batman always did what was good for Gotham and him):

• Leap tall supplier cancellations and changes with a single phone call. 
• Leave you to do your job fighting villains versus the menial tasks of shopping for the right reservations, changing reservations, expensing reservations, and more. 
• Jump into battle with someone covering your back and providing you with useful data to accomplish your task. 
• Confirm your decisions making sure its good for you, Gotham, and the Butler.
• Maintain your secret identity by making sure only the right people know who you are with data security control you can understand.
• Ensure the data you need to fight your battle comes from every source in an unbiased fashion.
• Get you upgraded when appropriate with the right cool tools and equipment like a bat car versus a compact.
• Provide the right seats so that you are rested and ready to jump into battle.  

Even Batman needed Robin and the Butler - and they were always by his side when things went awry. Don’t be a Joker.

5 Advantages Gained by Establishing a Centralized Billing Program with a Credit Card Company

Saving time and money is the key to travel procurement and while other more expensive solutions exist to automate all T&E expenses, this is a very good first step in capturing more travel data with actual spend versus simply booked spend.

1. Gain Efficiencies with a Card-less Solution. Save your travelers from having to pay out of pocket and simplify your company’s payment and reimbursement processes by allowing these expenses to be on a company card. With less credit cards in use, less changes to numbers and expiration dates saves time.
2. Gain control and visibility over more travel spend. Have more complete data on spend including air, hotel, car rental and rail costs. Effectively monitor and manage traveler’s expenses by consolidating virtually all your travel expenditures into one account, one bill, and one payment. Ensure preferred supplier and travel policy compliance, access spend data that is meaningful to your company and improve spend visibility to assist with supplier negotiations.
3. Reduce traveler responsibility for payment without issuing cards. Travelers do not have to use their cards for a large portion of travel and this service can be provided without issuing cards for travelers. This can be especially useful when you have contractor and other non-employee types requiring payment for travel. This system can be combined with a program that includes the issuance of cards for certain employee types.
4. Provide Travelers With Access to Benefits. Many of these programs offer enhanced business travel accident insurance, baggage insurance, and some 24-hour emergency service. Points can also be a benefit.
5. Streamline Reconciliation. Account Reconciliation systems enable you to streamline and reduce the reconciliation cycle by days or weeks. It can be configured to the requirements of your financial systems to lessen IT programming time and costs. You can even have the capability to reconcile transactions and edit multiple transactions in a single step. You can enhance individual BTA transactions with your organization’s HR data. Allocate transactions to the appropriate cost center through account code validation. Save time by not having to request and receive missing data.

There are many ways to process travel payments and many times of cards and brands of issuers. Seek a consultation on the options and time and money can be saved while helping travelers facilitate the payment of this significant line item.

What is Ethical when it Comes to Making Travel Arrangements? 7 Tips to Keep Your Organization from Going from DIY to DIFM

What is ethical when it comes to using company paid expenses to enhance personal gains? What is ethical when it comes to taking personal gains when negotiating with suppliers? Company culture, standards, policies, training, HR, and legal responsibilities come into play when establishing policies on items like this - and travel is no exception.

The government asks its contractors to report any gains a company may get from suppliers for expenses paid for by the government. It wants to be aware. In a recent article from PCMA’s Convene Magazine, ethics was discussed in regard to what a meeting planner should and should not accept when in negotiation with hotels while planning a major event. It also suggested that policies on such matters should be clear and in writing.

Do these ethics and your culture get considered when booking travel? Are these standards in writing? It may seem insignificant to you that a traveler wants to go to their favorite website to book travel to maximize miles and influence, use their personal card for these charges to also gain miles and influence (while slowing down the expense process), and the same with their hotel and car expenses regardless of what is in the greater good of the company paying for these expenses. The cost of these items is significant when your company purchases many trips if complete travel anarchy is in place. Plus, there is a want to find out the impact.

Here are a few keys here that are important to consider:

1. Some of this influence is important and should be respected as travel is hard on road warriors. Business travel should respect the company and traveler.
2. There are surely thresholds under which would want to let employees make the call to support their preferred supplier and over which approval should be sought.
3. If you have preferred suppliers as a company, make sure people support them and explain why it is important to do so.
4. The extra time it may take to process expenses or make changes or support the traveler in case of emergency should be considered.
5. Your policy should address what is ethical and in the best interest of the company and why and people should be trained to it.
6. Travel should be booked in one place so you can monitor adherence and justify or quantify the decisions made.
7. This process and these policies should follow your culture, should comply with other HR functions, should consider what business you are in, and should be run by legal.

If before you know it, anarchy in travel spread to computer purchases, health insurance, and even office supplies, you end up with a DIFM (do it for me) versus what seems like a simple DIY (do it yourself) philosophy.

Six Ways to Determine if You Should Rein in Your Rogue Travelers

Millennials often shun the concept of a centralized managed travel system. They have come to learn that they know a lot more about technology than many of their more senior associates managing line items like this and they think that simply by technology access they can do it better. Most claim they are doing it to save money but more often than not proof of that result is not always available to those who hope to keep an eye on this significant line item. I would also mention that for years travelers have claimed they could do it better themselves even when they had to call multiple airlines. In every analysis I have been involved in the results didn’t prove these travelers right because many had their own idea of what the best value was (many times that perception involved their preferred suppliers and not the company’s). Do not get me wrong, their intent was not malicious but they many times end up feeling complacent with going to their go to suppliers and they did not always consider all the options in an unbiased way. This has been my experience, anyway. There are six ways to evaluate and assess these rogue claims to determine the CBA of this behavior.

1.      Benchmark. Compare the rogue average airline ticket, hotel, and car spend over the course of the year to those that are complying. There are ways to capture rogue and complaint traveler data these data via expense reports, card data and more.

2.      Bias. Run a report of spend by traveler and look for supplier consistencies. Are they always on American? Does it seem their hotel selection complies with policy?

3.      Policy compliance. Look at how you define value in your travel policy and what travelers should select in your policy to determine if even when they book outside your system they are making good selections.

4.      Cancellation cost. Check to see how many trips these travelers cancel and if they are using up their unused non refundable tickets or if they are incurring hotel or car cancellation charges at rates over and above the others.

5.      Deals. Asses the volume of spend you are investing in different suppliers and ensure you couldn’t be securing a discount or benefit from these suppliers as a company by managing spend within your system. If you have deals like this you must consider what you may lose by not having travelers use these deals.

6.      Compliance/Legal. When people go rogue how do you know where they are and if they get hurt or make the wrong buying decisions would the law be by your side. A chat with you legal team may help clarify legal obligations and even business plan compliance obligations.

With these few consideration you can put a number on the cost benefit analysis of managed versus unmanaged travel and make the right decisions. In this life we all have to comply with many sensible rules for the greater good- taxes, health care requirements, traffic laws, workplace obligations, etc. Not everything can go rogue and in my experience and in most instances, T&E is not a place to go rogue and not only because of trip. It is not just about booking trips and it is also about managing travel – the line item.

Five Places to Secure Data About T&E That Can Uncover Treasures For This Sizeable Line Item

We work with many small and mid sized companies who are ready to get a handle on their T&E spend. Sure their people can book trips a variety of ways but how do you know that you agree with what they have selected and they haven’t left some significant opportunities on the table for the company’s budget? Many don’t. They have no idea what they spend in many of these expense categories and don’t know how they stack up to others or even those within their organization. As a result they cannot quantify their missed opportunities and they cannot define what the company should expect them to do when making choices for travel. And you don’t have to be the travel gestapo to spot check and clarify expectations for big savings. By making sure that the company’s and traveler’s desires are respected, big money can be saved, expense processing can be streamlined, the volume the company spends can be leveraged for deals, and support and emergency care can be enhanced.

Here is where you can find some of this data.

1. Travel Management Company. When you direct all travel to one travel management company (we all have online and call in booking opportunities if we are focused on the business travel marketplace) you can access what was booked, policy compliance data, lost opportunity data, spend by department or customer or person , available unused non refundable tickets, and more. If you are assigned an account manager and have a corporate agreement with your travel company also, most of us will even help you benchmark your travel spend to determine treasures.
2.  Credit Card. With one central card system you can have a great deal of the data mentioned above but you will see actual spend versus what was booked (what the agency has). In addition entertainment costs also come into play here also. The data from those who book outside of your travel system can also be secured if you make them use your card system at least so you can compare how they are doing as rogues versus managed travelers.
3. Expense Systems. Popular today are automated expense systems that are pre populated with booking data from your TMC’s bookings tools and data sent to it by your travelers. These systems too have extensive amounts of actual data in many T&E categories.
4. Itinerary Management Apps. Trip Case and Trip It for example have upgraded versions that allow companies to aggregate data for trips booked and sent to these apps for you to review.
5. General Ledger. If nothing else this data has to fall into your accounting system somehow and some way even if spreadsheet expense reports and rogue travel is your norm.

T&E is the second largest controllable cost for the average company and it makes me nervous when I hear companies don’t know what they spend and cant easily get this data. Its my experience that when data is collected and the opportunities are assessed, treasures can be found is easily managed places.