Social networking is more than just a way to keep in touch with friends – for the business travel community it could be a way to better rates, better adoption and more efficient travel, says Martin Cowen. But does the hype live up to the reality?
SOCIAL NETWORKING is an oversimplification of what sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tripadvisor can do. Corporate networking – applying the principle of the consumer-facing sites in a business context – is more challenging and complicated and, as a result, more interesting.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
Travelport Opinions is as close as we get to a corporate networking site. Agents – including travel management companies (TMCs) and those not using Travelport’s Galileo or Worldspan network – can sign up and ask the community questions about where to stay and eat, transfer options, off-the-clock activities and even tipping etiquette.
The argument is that this pooled resource can help everyone enhance their service proposition.
The site, launched in Australia and New Zealand last year, now has nearly 10,000 members from 141 countries, with most of it achieved through viral channels. Viral is the tech world’s equivalent of word of mouth. It is also a finance director’s dream – it doesn’t cost much.
Jason Hancock, director of new business development at Travelport, is in charge of the project. “With so many people from so many countries signed up, we have credibility as a global B2B [business to business] network,” he says.
“Other metrics – such as the level of engagement, page views, length of stay onsite – are all positive.”
Sabre has similar products, with Cubeless and Sabre Town competing in the same space as Travelport’s Opinions. However, it sees the recent high-profile launch of the Sabre Red App Centre as a unique proposition for corporate networking. Sabre Red is the platform upon which its Sabre Red Workspace suite of products is built. Its Red App Centre is like Apple’s App Store or Google’s Android Market. Sabre-approved developers get access to the code and can build apps, which are then marketed to Sabre Red Workspace users. The precise money-flow between Sabre, the developers and the end-user of the apps is confidential, with Sabre insisting that revenue opportunities exist for all concerned.
Red App Centre business development manager Pravin Muthukumar says this means travel agents (including TMCs and in-house agents) can talk to the developer community and get specific corporate networking tools which satisfy their precise needs, rather than having to shoehorn in a tool which wasn’t really designed for their business.
“Social media plays a central role in our business and leisure experiences,” he said, “but with Red App Centre it can be targeted. We expect the offer to vary from simple utility apps that automate agency tasks and improve efficiency, to ones that proactively manage travel reservations by sending travel notifications and destination tips to travellers.
“It can also drive new revenue opportunities for TMCs by enabling reservations for restaurants, excursion trips or events, adding to their service proposition to clients.”
An oft-quoted shortcoming of corporate networking from travellers is that a truly social network should know who you are – and if nine out of ten trips you make are from Heathrow to JFK, the content accessed through corporate networks should recognise that and not bring up Stansted to Chicago. If you are a vegetarian or lactose intolerant, the restaurant recommendations should include places which can accommodate these preferences.
“It will be possible for a developer to provide an app which can link with a traveller’s social profile” says Muthukumar. Amadeus, meanwhile, is not saying much on the subject – just that it is committed to making sure it can help connect the various social network products on the market without committing to developing an Opinions/Sabre Town product of its own.
Hancock adds that Travelport was looking at revenue opportunities from Opinions – albeit modest but incremental nonetheless. A media company will be using a privatelabel version of Opinions by the end of the year, he says. A private label effectively means the back-end and functionality of the site will be made available to the company, who will put their own “skin” on it, thus branding it as their own. It harkens back to when many B2C [business to consumer] sites white-labelled online travel agencies with a “powered by....” strapline somewhere on the site.
“The content will be private to the company,” Hancock says. The core Opinions site will also run banner ads from suppliers, but Hancock insists they will be discreet. “The site doesn’t have the room for advertising in the way that the B2C sites do,” he says, “and we will keep it that way.”
CONSULTING
Clare Murphy, from business travel consultancy Bouda, says there’s been interest in networking from the corporates and TMCs it deals with over the past year or so, but with limitations. “Social media is certainly featuring in the RFPs [requests for proposal] but it is still a tick box exercise,” she says. “It reminds me of 10 years ago when online booking tools first hit the market. We are asked if we can offer social media advisory services – we say yes and it seems that is enough for the RFP, but there is little follow-up.”
And as the global slowdown continues, “other things are a priority”. When many companies are still reluctant to sign off business trips, social media is irrelevant – if your policy is no travel, then the dodgy wifiat hotel X or the terrible wine on airline Z isn’t really an issue.
Perspectives from outside the industry are useful in trying to negotiate the business/consumer dynamic. Daniel Rowles is a digital marketing specialist who organises courses for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has worked with corporate giants such as Vodaphone, Warner Bros and the BBC. He says social media within a B2B context is gaining traction, but again there’s a gap between the level of interest and adoption.
“There is evidence that many business decisions are made on the back of conversations which take place within B2B networks,” says Rowles. “Slowly, big corporates are understanding the value of corporate networking.”
But he adds: “The buy-in is quite high, but adoption is slow. This applies to their business travel approach.” It’s a sobering thought that social media is a relatively new concept. Rowles suggests that the support industries around social media are also in their infancy, but the situation is changing, to the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular.
“Social media monitoring is becoming more available,” he said, “with some decent tools available for a $10 a month fee. So small travel agencies or businesses can monitor what their travellers are saying or what is being said about their suppliers more effectively. As the cost of monitoring comes down, it will be easier for SMEs to get an acceptable ROI [return on investment] from their social media spend because effective monitoring is possible.”
The world’s largest hotel chain will clearly have more than $10 a month to spend on its monitoring. Intercontinental Hotels Group’s (IHG) sales and marketing director Matt Luscombe says all social media channels are managed in-house, ensuring it can connect with its business and leisure customers in an engaging and relevant way.
Outside of its own channels, IHG also keeps an eye on what is being said about it elsewhere. “We have a customised listening and monitoring platform developed for us,” he says, adding that it has guidelines for its managed and franchised properties: “We continuously update the guidelines as rules of engagement and interaction trends evolve.”
The final word comes from Rowles. He sums up the dilemma facing all business travel stakeholders: “The reality is most employees use social media, but it is hard to make sure that individuals stick within corporate guidelines.”
The leakage that still persists from travellers booking outside policy, despite the maturity of online booking tools, is a sign that there is still some way to go before corporate networking is fully embraced for travel, despite the advantages it can bring.
ON PLATFORM ONE...
CALIFORNIA-BASED e-commerce firm Rearden Commerce’s presence in the corporate travel world took an interesting turn in September when it bought US-based social-buying service HomeRun and its OfferEngine platform, which powers group commerce programmes for many well-known consumer websites. Rearden says it is integrating its new acquisition into its Deem platform, which offers companies “complete and comprehensive control of all non-payroll spend, based on relevance”. The technology behind it is likely to go over the heads of most of us – your tech correspondent included – but the possibilities offered via integration of e-commerce, m-commerce and social commerce is worth hearing from one of the few companies to have made the leap. Rearden’s senior vice-president for travel services, Tony d’Astolfo, explains.
Will corporate travel policies be more effective if platforms have social networking-type functions built in to work alongside existing mobile and web functions?
We believe the web is smarter now, and that its artificial intelligence capabilities can be applied to business travel purchasing to drive higher policy compliance and better traveller behaviour. We will deliver a user experience that is intuitive, that knows the user and offers the flights and hotels within policy, based on their preferences and history. Users will like it better and trust it more.
Social [networking] has a role to play in solving business challenges for both travel managers and travellers. For travel managers, they benefit from having more fluid collaboration that leads to things like ride sharing and less time spent planning. For travellers, especially arrangers and small groups planning together, the process gets so much easier.
What can group and social buying do for corporate buyers?
Our goal is to enhance the experience for everyone involved: end user, corporate buyer and supplier. So, to the degree that the corporate buyer wants to target only a certain level of employee, our platform will facilitate that and will consider a number of attributes in doing so. For example, a car service offer might be limited to only those with vice-president in their title, leaving from five designated cities, during a specific period where the car supplier has excess capacity.
For suppliers, targeted and relevant offers will give them a new ability to serve their best clients. In the meantime, we are more likely to target offers to travellers based on where they are and what situations they are in, such as: “I’ve been delayed”, or: “I’m looking for a good place to treat my client to dinner tonight.”
Does Rearden expect its move into sectors other than business travel to give better insight into travel overall? Is there a danger the specific requirements of a business travel platform will be lost among a more consumer goods platform?
Deem is a platform, and it’s always been our belief that a platform is the only way to solve the myriad of situations an employee is faced with in their working lives. We started in travel because it is a large spend category that crosses a wide base of employees, and that carries a significant upside for all the constituents – employee, corporate buyer, supplier – if done well.
But it has always been our plan to expand and include other spend and productivity categories. Many of our clients start with basic travel components – air, car, hotel – then add related travel categories – car service, airport parking, dining – and eventually move to other high frequency but unrelated areas – desktop shipping.
We plan to continue to deliver more services on to the platform so it becomes the ultimate one stop shop for employees as well as the corporate buyer.
To what extent can Facebook-type tools and functions actually help travel policies work better for travellers and corporate management?
Look at it like this: your company is a community, the division you work for is a subset of that community, the peers on your small team yet another subset. We expect to leverage them all in an effort to deliver the most relevant options versus making the user hunt them down. Today we’re grabbing reviews from known sources such as Zagat and Tripadvisor. Over time we will allow users to post their own reviews and to leverage their various communities to help them make better decisions.
In the long-term, to what extent could Rearden’s social/ m-commerce crossover transform business travel buying? Should TMCs be looking over their shoulders?
We do think we will have a significant impact on redefining how business travel is done. But we see TMCs as a vital component of the business travel ecosystem. In fact, we believe we complement what they do today, and will enable them to enhance their value proposition by allowing our technology to help manage more spend categories. They deliver the essential service that complements our technology, so it really is a hand-in-glove proposition.