Companies must put a return on investment (ROI) price on the cost of business travel, IT company KDS said today.
Dominic O'Regan, its solutions consultancy director, said the total cost of a trip was calculated accurately and then weighed against the benefit of the trip to the company.
Speaking at the Business Travel Market in London, O'Regan said: "Right now, when the economic pressures on every business are so intense, it is more important than ever before to avoid unnecessary - and unnecessarily expensive - travel.
"The first step in that process is to know the likely total cost of a trip before the travel plans are approved. Are you going to spend more travelling than you will generate when you arrive? I cannot stress enough the importance of ROI in modern business travel."
O'Regan said companies included air fares in their trip cost but left out items like TMS fees, lodge card spend and incidentals.
"You only realise the actual total cost of the trip after the event, by when it's too late to do anything.
"Perhaps you never truly realise the total trip cost at all. If you want to stop wasting money, you need comprehensive, reliable, easily-accessible and well-presented data from the very start of the travel management process," he said.
www.kds.com