In case there was any doubt, the feeling that travel has largely slipped out of the hands of the specialist travel manager into those of the procurement department was confirmed by figures released by Tony McGetrick earlier this month.
Mr McGetrick, BTI UK's director of sales, said that only about 15% of companies now handled their travel through a specialist travel manager while at about 65% it was dealt with by the finance or procurement department.
In the Seventies, the figures were very different (see Table). Then 35% of travel was handled by travel mangers, 40% by the human resources department and only 15% by finance/procurement.
How Procurement took over travel:
1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Human Resources 40% 25% 10% 5%
Travel Managers 35% 25% 20% 15%
Finance/Procurement 15% 35% 50% 65%
Others 25% 20% 20% 15%
In fact since those relative heydays, travel has inexorably passed from travel managers and the human resources department to procurement. More than three times as many companies have procurement departments managing their travel as have to travel managers and human resources combined.
Of course as an agent, Mr McGetrick is against this. Like many agents before him and surely after him, he maintains that travel is a “unique category of spend.”
In his entertaining presentation at the Business Travel Show in Birmingham, he stressed the point: “However hard-nosed a negotiator you are, this is a special category where the human element can not be ignored.”