Convincing younger travellers to comply with company policy on their bookings is easier than other age groups, according to buyers.
The majority of delegates at the Business Travel Show’s Hosted Buyer Pre-Show Conference said that the so-called millennial generation were generally more compliant than older workers, despite lots of speculation to the contrary in recent years.
Mikael Holmyr, global travel manager for Swedish engineering firm SKF, said: “The younger generation are easier to persuade to comply. We have more problems with the older generations.”
The overwhelming majority of buyers agreed with this point of view in a show of hands at the conference in London yesterday.
Continental global travel manager Ruediger Bruss added that he saw no signs of different levels of compliance across age groups or types of roles within the tyre-making company.
“There’s no significant difference between age groups,” he told the conference. “There’s no evidence that young people do things differently. But the more you go up the ladder, the less compliant people are.”
The session looked at the trend of corporate travel increasingly moving away from being a procurement function, focused on reducing costs, to becoming part of human resources departments where managing travellers is seen as being more important.
Two buyers from energy companies said they had moved travel from procurement into HR in recent months which had been done to save money following the collapse in the price of oil.
“They are all having to fly economy now which they hate doing,” said one buyer. “We moved travel into HR as a PR move and we have played up duty of care.
“We feel HR is more approachable as a department than procurement. We have an open door policy and we can explain the reasons behind our policies.”
Hans-Ingo Biehl, executive director of German travel buyers’ association VDR, said there were “cultural differences within corporations” which affected how travel was managed.
“Corporations need to think about the traveller first – not just about cost or the travel programme,” he said. “Programmes are in place with airline and hotel partners and these are driven from the procurement side.
“Now we have other elements coming into the focus of corporates such as travel security, tracking and duty of care – these are HR topics. Travel managers need to have close ties to HR anyway.”