A travel management company says SMEs are looking for more hands-on support due to heightened duty of care obligations in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Corporate Traveller UK, part of the Flight Centre group, says that half of the 42 SME clients it has signed since the start of July have asked to sign two-year contracts, a development it says marks “a major shift” in its usual servicing model.
Andy Hegley, UK general manager Corporate Traveller said: “Traveller safety and duty of care have become top priorities for companies as they start to resume business travel, as well as those who kept travelling throughout the crisis.
“This is particularly relevant for SMEs as they don’t have a dedicated 'travel manager' and the person who owns travel may have multiple responsibilities. Pre-Covid, companies may have been booking their own travel, or using an online TMC, but post-Covid, they need specialist advice and support from a dedicated travel consultant, as well as technology solutions such as traveller tracking.”
New clients for Corporate Traveller UK include publishing group Hachette UK in London, offshore oil and gas engineering company Aquaterra Energy, the University of Law in London and Tyne & Wear-based GreCon, a provider of fire protection and industrial measurement systems, CentralNic, a web services provider and Investis Digital, a digital communications and marketing company. In total, the new clients had a combined annual pre-Covid spend of £18.7 million.
The company says it has also seen some positive signs of a business travel recovery. Air travel bookings for the period August to October were up by 36 per cent against the previous three months and hotel transactions increased by 33 per cent for the same period.
It also said clients are increasingly seeking advice on hotels before booking, with the number of offline bookings increasing from 32 per cent in March to 59 per cent in October.
In the same period, low-cost hotel bookings have dropped by 39 per cent as clients have shifted towards booking higher-end properties to ensure travellers have access to facilities such as on-site restaurants, room service and 24-hour reception facilities.
Hegley said: “Despite the impact of the global pandemic on the business travel sector, and even though the UK has gone into a second national lockdown, we have seen green shoots of business travel resuming and we have continued to win new business as SMEs are looking for greater personal support from their TMC.”
Jonathan Hamill, managing director at GreCon, who appointed Corporate Traveller in July, and whose employees have continued to travel during the pandemic, said: “GreCon’s customers span several industrial sectors which were deemed critical during the pandemic, with examples of recycling, manufacturing and food production.
“These customers rely on our systems for their mission-critical operations, and we took steps to ensure we could maintain business continuity. The sourcing of accommodation when many hotels were closed became a vital service to us, enabling our engineers to travel across the UK and Ireland, to attend customer sites and perform maintenance and repairs.”