Social media and mobile applications offer travel management companies (TMCs) a new way of engaging with clients, according to a leading business travel figure.
Chris Crowley, president of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, said: “This is a world of a bewildering number of products and applications, but also opportunities.
“They are a great opportunity for us as TMCS... We have a consultative and engaging opportunity here to work with customers.”
Speaking at the Guild of Travel Management Companies’ (GTMC) annual overseas conference at Fairmont Bab Al Bahr in Abu Dhabi, Crowley said the focus in the business travel sector is shifting.
“Unlike 15 years ago, when our business was governed by fairly strict corporate policy, we now find ourselves in an industry that focuses on traveller satisfaction and mobility,” he said.
“It’s all about the individual. How do we make them secure and effective? How do we ensure they deliver a return on investment on what they do?
“The individual is a much more empowered and focused individual. They know a lot about travel. They have an aesthetic taste and opinion about how they should and shouldn’t travel.”
Travellers will no longer accept being told they must travel with a particular airline and stay in a particular hotel, said Crowley, who is also SVP of the global client team EMEA at BCD Travel.
“This is very difficult for the corporate buying community,” he said, but the industry must engage with the trend.
For example, travel managers should have an influence on which phone travellers use, said Crowley: “First things first, we have to encourage our customers to get involved in the purchase acquisition of these devices.
“If the most important thing the traveller uses in their day to day life is their mobile phone, then the travel manager should be sitting in the committee that makes the purchase of the phone.”
The corporate buyer must also loosen his or her grip on the suppliers the company uses, for example around the use of social media.
There are thousands of applications and products that travellers can use, such as Facebook and Tripit – the sheer number “scares” the corporate buyer,” said Crowley.
“They think about it like they think about an airline, hotel or car hire programme – that they have to sit down and do an individual contract and negotiation with each one of these people.
“Many of these companies don’t even have people. They have a long-haired freaky guy in California who runs it globally and makes millions. There’s no way you can have that kind of conversation.”
Instead, it becomes a question of TMCs helping clients to understand that they need to build platforms which they can plug in to things and make the solutions that they want.
“Imagine it as a racecourse and that the travellers’ PNR is like the horse. If we can help that PNR jump the different hurdles, from tool to tool, from service to service, as he goes through the process, it adds efficiency, it drives down cost, it improves visibility and transparency, and it makes a traveller more efficient and happy,” said Crowley.
“We need community-based business travel policy design. We need to start thinking about empowering the individual traveller within the community. It may save more money, and make the traveller more effective. It also has more interesting potential for development in the long term.”