Corporates with global travel policies can save more than 45% on their spend, according to a new survey.
The study by IT company Amadeus and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE)
found that 4% of companies questioned achieved above this level of savings.
A further 10.8% said their cost reductions were up to 45%.
The bulk of the 240 travel managers questioned (73.4%) said their savings were up to 30%. Only 11.8% said they made no savings at all.
The survey, released at the ACTE Global Education conference in Barcelona, also found that a much larger proportion of multi-nationals with an annual spend of more than $100m, had a global policy.
81% of the bigger companies said their global programme was "worthwhile".
Only 29% of the smaller companies had a global programme and 59% of these said they were making reasonable savings.
The survey found that corporates regarded the most significant benefits of a global policy as traveller tracking (highlighted by 87%), increased negotiating clout (86%), reduced costs (84%), improved efficiency (82%) and improved service (80%).
But the challenges they encountered in adopting a global programme ranged from integrating technology (85%) to getting global data (77%), compliance (76%), consistent service levels (71%) and gaining management support (69%).
Collecting comprehensive data was more difficult in Europe, partly because the availability of e-Folio by corporate card providers was "spotty" and partly because of the complex tax regulations on the continent.
Travel managers in Europe also encountered other differences. These included a wider use of lodge cards for central billing and a correspondingly smaller use of corporate cards than in the USA.
Other differences included the greater use of automated processes with online technology in Northern Europe compared with the greater use of travel agents in Southern Europe.
* The Amadeus/ACTE survey questioned 240 travel managers in June, 2006 in the US (61%), Europe (24%), Canada (6%), Asia-Pacific (5%) and South Africa (3%).
* BTE will be taking a fuller look at this survey next week
* see BTE's recruitment site www.businesstraveljobs.com