Why travel management
is important
If you take steps to retain a travel budget
and manage it efficiently, you will most
likely see a significant return on your
investment.
“The majority of business travel policies
are flawed,” says Carl Howard of All Points
Travel — Atlanta. “If companies invested
time in their strategy of travel planning,
they can reduce overall expenses while
keeping face time with clients. This year’s
economic roller coaster has businesses
sloppily hacking away at travel, which is
making a bad problem worse.”
Sixty-nine percent of companies polled in
an October Association of Corporate
Travel Executives survey say they will be
spending less or the same on travel in 2009.
“Businesses citing lateral travel expenditures in 2009 will likely just be traveling
less as the cost of travel has climbed significantly,” says Susan Gurley, executive
director, Association of Corporate Travel
Executives. “Even those who say they are
spending more are barely keeping up with
the increase.”
You’d like to think your employees have
the company’s best interest in mind, but
statistics show companies that place a travel manager or an outside agency in charge
of travel finances stay within the confines
of their budgets while employee-handled
travel has a less successful return on
investment.
You need to take a proactive approach to
managing your travel costs if you expect to
get bottom-line results for a minimum of
expense.
But being smart about your budget
entails more than waiting for the computerized ping alert of a reduced airline fee
like one of Pavlov’s dogs. While airfare is
the most costly aspect of travel, you don’t
want to arbitrarily eliminate it.
“The first step is to differentiate between
strategic and nonstrategic travel,” Gurley
says. “Strategic travel generates revenue
while nonstrategic travel is anything that
results in cost but has no substantial gain in
revenue.”
In most cases, meetings with customers
are justifiable, as there is a direct correlation to revenue gains. On the other hand,
meeting with the head of the Omaha office
may not have much of an effect on your
bottom line this year, so consider cutting
that — and other trips like it — out of the
budget. Use videoconferencing or teleconferencing equipment for these internal
meetings whenever possible.
Why? Because internal travel can
account for about 40 percent of a business’s travel. Don’t worry, technology has
come a long way since the early days of
choppy robotic movements and out-ofsync voices. Look into Skype and WebEx
as a couple of travel alternatives that could
save you money while still keeping you in
touch with your people in a more personal
manner.
