Update your travel policies to save more money and support online adoption
This blog is designed to help any company quickly overhaul their travel policy for the 21st century.
How do we know how to do this? To build a better online booking tool, we had to dig far deeper than the outdated user interfaces. Through our research and interviews with hundreds of roadwariors and travel managers from Fortune 500 companies, we found that one of the most common--and yet unspoken--reasons that employees avoid their companies’ online booking platforms was the policy configurations. Booking travel with an agent or consumer website allows travelers to quietly sidestep the online approval process, so-called lowest logical airfares, and mandatory suppliers.
If we overhauled the user interface of the online booking tool without the underlying travel policy rules, we would be applying lipstick to a pig--and we would not achieve our goal of a 95%+ online adoption rate.
The purpose of this blog is to arm travel managers with the fruits of that research: the information they need to develop travel policies that work for everybody. Modern travel rules that actually help employees identify the smartest options for their trips while serving their companies business objectives in a trackable manner.
We compiled these data-driven rules from industry experts from some of the best managed programs in the world. We call them “Travel Policy 3.0” because they are the evolution of two prior phases in managed travel. Starting in the 1980s, Travel 1.0 allowed travel managers to configure online booking tools with layers of rigid rules designed to control costs. In the last ten years, Travel 2.0 allowed unguided bookings anywhere and used gift cards to incentivize savings.
What’s wrong with Travel 2.0? The complete freedom to select any option from any booking platform permits frivolous spending. Meanwhile, incentive programs like gift cards are unproven at best and potentially expensive at worst (though WhereTo is able to support them if a client wishes). Moreover, travelers who book on a consumer site may not be comparing apples to apples, meaning they may select a nonrefundable rate or a rate with less perks that is only a few dollars less than a negotiated rate. The cure for too much curation is not a free for all.
Travel Policy 3.0 combines the best of both worlds. Employees book all their travel on one platform, but it compares negotiated rates with consumer rates. Price is factored into the recommendations, but so are travelers’ commute time and loyalty accounts. It’s flexible and fair to all, so there is no reason to circumvent it. Implementing it in WhereTo has helped us deliver savings of nearly $200 per trip while achieving an unprecedented 99% online adoption rate.
Every few weeks we will add a new suggestion to this blog on how you can implement Travel Policy 3.0 in your program. Alternatively, our team is happy to schedule time with you to review your travel policies and provide suggestions from the industries best practices as a complimentary service.