Buying Business Travel is pleased to once again be official partner to the 2015 Business Travel Show. The show has gathered a team of senior buyers join its advisory board, to bring their knowledge and expertise to the conference education programme.
BBT talks to Vanda Barandas the corporate travel strategy manager at Lisbon-based IT firm Novabase. Barandas is also an advisory board member of the BT show.
What are the top three issues facing travel managers at the moment?
I believe that the majority of the companies with a mature travel programme are now at the stage where their concerns are somehow focused on challenging yourself on how to provide comfort and wellbeing to travelers – balancing costs of course – rather than on actual problems as these can be mostly solved by the majority of the software and processes already available in the market.
In the short term, I will be focusing my efforts on the following actions:
- Applying internal audit methods to evaluate the TMC efficiency, and price optimisation
- Implementing solutions that allow us to focus on duty-of-care preventive measures, with the right balance of administrative costs
- Finding the best mobile solution that will add real value to our employees’ mobility needs
What will be the biggest issue affecting how you do your job in 2015?
Adapting the company process to further accommodate the trends of the ‘millennials’ – considering that we are a very flexible company focused on the ‘whole person’ and we have a growing number of employees from this generation. This means seeing the world through their eyes and implementing further ‘nice to have’ mobile solutions focused on their wellbeing and needs.
How important is it for you to attend the Business Travel Show?
Being responsible for the definition of the travel and safety strategy for the Novabase group, I face the daily challenge of enforcing the company vision while keeping our employees happy. With Novabase being a very dynamic and young corporation, it is essential to keep up to date with trends and solutions in this market. This show brings the benefit of consolidating in one place the essential networking, the knowledge of new suppliers and solutions, while providing interesting education sessions.
What topics are you looking forward to hearing more about at the Business Travel Show conference?
One of our main drivers is the employee satisfaction level, so I do expect to have the opportunity to participate in discussions on how to increase the business traveller’s satisfaction and wellbeing, balanced with the right dose of innovative procedures on how to implement duty of care preventive measures.
The Business Travel Show is Europe’s largest exhibition and conference for buyers and managers of business travel – 25-26 February 2015 Grand Hall Olympia London.