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This blog is for anyone involved in the travel industry. I focus mostly on the procurement and management of corporate travel, with a bent toward best practices and innovation.
Author Archives: Scott Gillespie
Why TMCs Need a Dramatically Different Sales Approach
Ever notice how Travel Management Companies (TMCs) have a hard time selling their value? It’s not a complicated value proposition. “We’ll help you book travel at low prices and help your travelers on the road, so you’ll save money and … Continue reading
Posted in Travel Management, Travel Procurement, Trip Friction
Tagged sales, TMC Innovation, TMC RFP, Total Cost of Travel
6 Comments
Why Data Predicting Trumps Data Reporting
Quick – name a travel metric that your CFO would pay a lot of money to predict reasonably well. Next year’s travel savings? Maybe. Next year’s travel spend? Maybe. But he won’t pick your firm’s future travel policy compliance rate, … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Metrics and KPIs, Travel Management
Tagged predictive analytics, trip friction
2 Comments
Air Sourcing Moves Out of the Slow Lane
The big bottleneck in airline sourcing projects is the time and cost of entering detailed airline contract terms. That will soon change for the better. Fayrnet, a product of Volaro, automates the loading of airline contracts into GDSs. In speaking today … Continue reading
Posted in Airlines, Consultants, Travel Procurement
Tagged air rfp, airline sourcing, fayrnet
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Traveler Friction, Part 1: Three Key Benchmarks
Road warriors are a hardy bunch. tClara’s data on more than 100,000 travelers shows that each month road warriors often spend more than ten nights away from home, and spend more than 30 hours on planes. Month after month, that … Continue reading
Posted in Travel Management, Trip Friction
Tagged road warrior burnout, travel benchmarks, traveler friction
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Open Booking Takes Off With United
The corporate travel industry today took a big step toward making Open Booking a practical choice for travelers and travel managers. United and Concur announced their intention to launch a TripLink-enabled booking path on United.com by the first quarter of … Continue reading
Posted in Managed Travel 2.0, Travel Management
Tagged Concur, Open Booking, TripLink, United
8 Comments
What’s Your Worst-ever Business Trip?
You know how travelers love to whinge and moan about their worst business trips, right? It’s a popular cocktail party topic, and a harmless way to play a bit of one-upsmanship. Sometimes it’s a way to stake out some sympathy … Continue reading
Posted in Traveler Friction
Tagged #TripFriction, traveler burnout, Trip Frcition, trips from hell
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Solving the Blah-Blah Travel Data Problem
Travel managers routinely rank travel data as one of their most important issues. Yet AirPlus recently reported that 56% of North American travel managers surveyed said they would not be willing to pay for better travel data. OK, so let’s … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Travel Management
Tagged AirPlus, data analysis, travel data, travel data reporting
1 Comment
A Brighter Way to Measure Travel’s Impact
For the amount of money firms spend on travel, surely they’d like to know the impact. There is an incredibly practical – and pretty easy – way to answer this question. Forget about ROI – it’s too theoretical. Skip Big … Continue reading
Identifying Travel-related Retention Risks
Who can say when a traveler has reached that dreary destination of travel burnout? It’s a very individual issue, yes? For some, it may take years of constant hopping from terminal to taxi, while others may arrive after a few … Continue reading
Road Warrior Burnout: A Worthy Problem
Too much travel can cause anybody a load of stress. Exhibit A is Brad Feld, one of Silicon Valley’s best-known angel/venture capitalists. He lives in Colorado and was traveling 50-75% of the time. He hit a wall. Knew … Continue reading
