Procurement is playing an increasingly large role in travel management two speakers told the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) Forum in Paris.
Brigitte Jakubowski, consultant on business travel for JK Associates Consulting, reported on a survey of corporate traveller behaviour which analysed changes since the introduction of zero commission in France and the rise of procurement departments in the management of travel.
She told the 120 delegates at the Novotel Airport Hotel, Paris, that the survey revealed that 60% of French companies were now implementing the use of corporate cards for payment and up to 27% of companies had either implemented or are about to the use of self booking tools.
But it also revealed that travellers were "more and more under the control of the procurement department."
The same conclusion was reached by Herve Joseph-Antoine, vp Carlson Wagonlit Travel's solutions group EMEA in his presentation on best practice and optimising savings.
Mr Joseph-Antoine looked at areas where savings could be achieved: consolidation of meetings, in air and hotel spend, and in compliance with company travel policy.
But he said two other areas, now on the agenda, which were costs not savings were security and corporate responsibility.
The first he said manifested itself in a company's need to know where an employee was at any one time which required tracking.
The second was about attitudes to the environment which companies were taking into account when deciding on suppliers.
The ins and outs of yield management were explained by Hervé de Barbeyrac, pricing market manager USA for Air France.
He told the delegates, many of whom were attending their first ACTE Forum, how a carrier like Air France determined the price of seats for each flight.
Analysis of flights and the use of a yield management strategy were necessary because there was as much as 80% no show on some routes.
Analysts looked at the reason for such no shows and other factors like school holidays, local factors like a strike before allocating prices to seats.
Mr de Barbeyrac said that supply and demand meant that airlines were not going to offer discounts on early morning flights between London and Paris where people had to book well in advance to get a seat.
But on an 11am flight between the two cities, there would be a choice of prices for early bookers.
He said sit was similar for hotels. In London which has high occupancy, there are few negotiations but in Berlin and Madrid, negotiations were more common.