When To Greenlight an Open Booking

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When does it make sense for travelers to book outside the corporate channel?  Whenever you can get through each of these three gates:

1) Will the open booking data be acquired quickly by the corporate traveler security system?  This is a show-stopper for a lot of sites.

Some solutions are to use a tool like ProcureApp, or getting travelers to forward their bookings to an itinerary management tool, like TripIt.  Soon, we’ll see data capture solutions from Concur and GDSX, among others.  If getting the data is not a problem, then onward…

2) Will the  consumer site provide cost-competitive prices?

Why Bother Managing Travel?

That’s a serious question, after reading this recent GBTA report.

The key findings, covered in more detail here, show that unmanaged travelers achieve better business trips, are more satisfied with their business travel – and here’s the kicker – don’t spend any more than their managed traveler counterparts.

Let’s assume the study is valid, and that managing travel doesn’t produce significant savings.  Deep breaths, everybody – we can debate that last point later. For the sake of argument, if there aren’t significant savings from managing travel, why would we do it?

The Curious Case Against Managing Travel

Achieve better trips. Increase traveler satisfaction. Spend less on travel.

That’s the trifecta of travel management, isn’t it? So which horse would you bet on to deliver these wins – the one with, or without, a jockey?  The managed travel program, or the unmanaged travel program?

GBTA’s “Global Business Traveler Study 2012”, a 72-page report, shows the winner is the unmanaged program – and it’s not even a close race.  That’s the conclusion I draw from the study’s facts as they pertain to U.S. travelers.

Short’s Book It: A Brilliant Booking Breakthrough

Short’s Travel, arguably the most innovative TMC in North America, has done it again*.

Book It** allows a corporate traveler to search for airfares on any site, then e-mail the selected flight info to Short’s for booking and en-route servicing. Completely automated. Fast results.  Pure genius.

Why pure genius?  Because, according to
David LeCompte, Short’s president, some two-thirds of corporate travelers are shopping for their airfares on non-corporate websites anyway. Once they find a good flight, they have to re-enter the details into their corporate tool.  Newsflash – not every traveler bothers with that last step.

Then there’s the small problem that consumer OTAs are

Views on Travel Innovation, Part 3: What’s Needed

Good innovation solves worthy problems.  Here are three problems that strike me as worthy, and their very rough calls to action.  (Part 1 in this series covers major travel innovations to date; Part 2 covers key non-technology factors that will affect the future of the travel industry.)

Problem: Tedious Travel Searches.