Companies can cut their travel spend by up to 10% by online bookings, research by Carlson Wagonlit Travel's new Travel Management Institute has shown.
The savings come from air fares and agents' bookings fees.
Pascal Jungfer, CWT's vp solution group global, said online bookings resulted in savings on average tickets prices (ATPS) of up to 15% although the average was 5%.
Savings on transaction fees could be up to 50%, Mr Jungfer told a joint forum of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Belgian Association of Travel Managers in Brussels this week.
Another findings was that the return on investment for online booking usually came within a year for most companies and within two years for the vast majority.
Carlson researched 153 companies in America, Europe and Australia. Ten were subjected to a detailed case study and the rest replied to a survey. The research was carried out last year.
Mr Jungfer told the 120 delegates that self booking was something companies wanted because it could drive savings.
He said the research found that companies where there was a good travel policy and a good relationship with their agency achieved “negligible” savings.
"But where companies needed to move forward in these areas, self booking is going to be a catalyst," he said.
The research found there were four groups of performers regarding adoption rates: the fast adopters, the long runners who had a steady adoption rate, the stalled pioneers who started early but had not pushed on with it, and the newcomers.
Among the first the adoption rate was 60-70%, among the second 60%, among the third 20% and among the fourth 15%.
Mr Jungfer called the four factors which influenced adoption the "Four P's". These were the Pull – the training and persuasion of people to use the tools; the Push from the company to make them use them; the Product – getting the IT right; and the Price.
"We found there was no correlation between the size of a company and the ability to deploy SBTs," Mr Jungfer said.
But he admitted there was still a "fog of complexity" surrounding company concerns like payback.
"This is probably linked to the fact that the tools have in the past been disappointing and payback has taken longer than promised. There is still a fog about payback," he said.
But he said the 60% of the firm in the research had achieved payback within a year and 89% within two years.
* Carlson's Travel Management Institute will release full details of the study within the next few weeks.