History tends not to play a big role in travel management conferences or conversations. But that could be worth a rethink. After all, understanding how you got somewhere can often help you manage where you're going.
Travel manager surveys from only a couple of years back indicate what an important part of the job supplier relationship management and contract negotiations were. Indeed the travel manager's holy grail was to agree an annual contract — that would guarantee higher margin volumes for the supplier and larger rebates and lower fares or rates for the corporate.
But that was all before the bright young things in supplier finance departments recognised the valuable role that new technology and algorithms could have in contributing to their organisations' revenue lines.
Revenue management was born and corporate negotiated fares and rates which would last for a year started to look crude and obsolete.
And the phenomenon is no longer confined to hotels and airlines. According to a story in Business Traveller, IAG this week announced during its annual Capital Markets Day presentation that Avios, the currency of both BA's Executive Club and Iberia Plus loyalty programmes, would see a "progressive introduction of dynamic pricing from 2018".
In other words just as fares have moved from one fixed fare for high, low and shoulder season to a variable fare which reflected the historical, actual and likely demand for each and every flight to each and every destination, the same will be true when researching a reward flight.
Demand is usually less for the flight which arrives late evening than the one that lands mid-afternoon so fewer points are likely to be required for a seat on the BA183 which arrives at JFK from LHR at 2315 than on the BA173 which gets in at 1520.
How, you might ask, is this relevant for travel managers? FFPs are not often seen as a top consideration in managed travel programmes but many progressive managers have recognised their undoubted potential to to encourage compliance to the travel programme and deliver more value for frequent travellers.
The effects are therefore both indirect and direct. The indirect effect is a confirmation that in these days of big data forecasting, supply and demand has become an even more accurate exercise and that means the ability to finetune and personalise the prices for travel content in different months, days of the week, time of day.
The direct effect is the change in what constitutes relevant content. Frequent flyer programmes were once considered a fringe factor which suppliers would use to entice travellers to break policy. These days travel managers are much more likely to recognise how loyalty schemes can encourage their travellers to follow policy in their choice of preferred partners and also to give something back to employees who are expected to start work early and finish late at times when they travel for the job.
But it will no longer be the redemption value that will be determined by schedule but also be the award itself. A number of carriers now calculate reward points on the basis of the fare paid rather than the number of miles flown. Air France KLM announced this week that its loyalty club members will now earn miles based on the amount they spend on their ticket rather than the distance flown, with status members receiving more miles per euro spent.
The supplier rules are changing. Corporate travel will inevitably adapt.