Nestle’s group procurement manager for travel and event planning, Marc Zuber, recently spoke at the GBTAconference in Berlin.
On a panel with three other industry speakers he discussed the future of traveller engagement, managing traveller behaviour, gamification and using marketing techniques to influence travellers.
After the session BBT caught up with Zuber to discuss some of these points further:
Tell us about your background at Nestle
I’ve been working for Nestle for 26 years, 22 of these have been in the finance area and four years ago I requested to be transferred over to the procurement and managed travel side.
The reason is because it’s all about the transformational aspects of the corporate world of today, which is being able to make your services and production efficient but also engaged through change management and communication strategy and also looking at new processes and technology that helps us be even more competitive for the future.
Like most companies the employees are the major asset for the company so we might as well have something we can propose that will keep them in the organisation and make them feel happy, which is a challenge but one I like.
In your session at GBTA Berlin you mentioned managing traveller behaviour, how do you tackle this at Nestle?
At Nestle we have an understanding of what the travel category is not just at a regional but also global level. It’s very important to have a single point of contact that can explain what it stands for and what are the opportunities and pitfalls, so this is the first thing we do to get these people informed and equip them with a certain toolkit and engage them with stakeholders and travellers.
We also understand that each traveller is different...we are a global company so if you look at our western business the use of technology to engage has become a given, so we are actually using what is available to us including social media and actively engaging with our travellers using an online portal. We are also setting up focus groups and speaking with some our key travellers to understand their problems when travelling.
We don’t try to control we try to get input from them and make them feel like they’re part of the programme and nothing is imposed on them. We add in our programme a component of education so for example we will discuss yield management. They’re relatively mature travellers but we let them know how it affects us and then they’re a lot more responsive.
However, in our Latin countries it’s a lot more directive the command and control culture. So we need to engage more in that way so over there it’s a lot more of a top-down decision process whereby it’s communicating them what they expect them and how we want them to do it. If you don’t give them that kind of guidance they will be concerned.
When I worked in Mexico it was a joke but also true that if a boss asked an employee the time they would respond with “whatever time you say it is” – so the tone is dictated from the top so if you want to change you must be more directive.
Do you have a different approach to digital natives/Generation Y travellers?
We haven’t taken the approach to differentiate between generations because while it is true the younger generation might have more familiarity with using certain tools, it’s not always the case. Some people want to be contacted directly others will want to use technology so I’m concentrating on looking at how people want to receive information no matter what generation they come from.
Mobile has been talked about as one of the big ‘game changers’ to travel over the next year. What are the pitfalls to avoid when looking at a mobile strategy?
The key word is strategy – do you know what you want to do with mobile, what do you need and what do you want to do with it. At Nestle we are moving towards a more holistic integration of our processes from an end to end standpoint. We are starting to have a mobile strategy that goes across the end to end process. Fundamental elements to this are the trip management - so convenience in getting the information when you need it, and the interaction so we are building internally a similar thing to Trip advisor and giving travellers the chance to instantly give feedback about ceratin experiences when travelling.
The whole mobile initiative is under scrutiny because of compliance, the cloud technology is offering great opportunities but is a huge threat on your data management and we need to get a grip on where our data is going, risk behind it and what are the solutions protecting ourselves against that risk.
So we have our own mobile app store which we are starting to populate with apps, not just travel apps but company-wide ones. But it is mandatory that all the apps in there are fully scrutinised and vetted before they can be deployed and we are currently discussing how fast we can do that.
How do you manage what apps travellers can use then?
We would never refuse people using tools that are out there in the marketplace, however in our policy it states clearly how the traveller should use them and we expect it to be complied with. However, if a traveller wants to use an app not in our store we will not prevent them from using it. If you refuse the traveller will just do it anyway in a different channel.
It’s an emerging area and it’s getting a lot more attention and is one of our strategies to controlling traveller behaviour. Our biggest approach at the moment is providing the traveller with a very effective end to end process from the time they request a trip to when they get back, that is our main focal point, so building the apps on top of that but first that process has to be efficient.
How does the future of travel look for you?
First of all we have had a moment when people felt travel could be substituted with technology, I think this is gradually moving towards how we complement both.
I think ‘simplification’ is important – people expect simplification in the way they travel in solutions that are already carved out for them, ones that are convenient and pragmatic.
Thirdly supplier relationship management - we need to make travellers understand why we are working with some partners and not others. We need to make it visible to the traveller about why they must stay in a Hilton hotel not an NH hotel for example.
You talked about gamification and the problems around it. Can you elaborate further on this?
I believe gamification has a place in travel as long as it is used for the right benefits, I don’t think it should be used as a means to get compliance because you need to show what areas you want it in and then it looks as if you are saying some areas of the policy are more in favour than others.
However, today people want to be recognised so gamification can be used for instant gratification which doesn’t always have to be monetary. It can also be used to display good practice or recognising an employee who has helped you promote the programme and if that happens then we could have a gamification process in the programme that works and this is a path I’m trying to go down with Nestle at the moment.