At the recent WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit in Bangkok the audience, mainly travel and tourism-related bosses, were asked how they felt about their company travel programmes. The results were as follows.
The audience were then asked if they thought it had become harder to get sign off for a work trip. More leaned towards 'yes' than 'no'.
Is this increased pre-trip approval at play? Suppliers like Concur have seen an increase in travel managers using approval functions and at this year's Business Travel Show Carol Randall of Sage Consulting shared that more companies are putting approvals in place to reduce costs.
Rüdiger Bruss, purchasing manager at Continental uses various approval systems to ensure his travellers book in the right channel. His set-up works well for those who don't have a corporate card, particularly when booking flights although rail is being considered too.
While the primary reasons for implementing pre-trip approvals are to cut costs and get visibility on the traveller, the WTTC poll indicates that the message is getting across to travellers too. If it's harder to travel they, and their manager, may think more carefully about the why, when and frequency of their business travel.
Is this also a form of strategic meetings management? Any proactive pre-trip action is better than post-reimbursement when the money has already been spent. Plus when travellers actually want to travel less, as Lambros Andreasson's piece 'Changing the meetings mindset to reduce travel' there are benefits for all.