Travel managers are increasingly forcing their business travellers to obey company travel policy.
Mandating policy is now the "Number One initiative" among travel managers according to BCD Travel's 2007 Annual Client Benchmark Survey.
The travel management company (TMC) said that this is the first time in three years that mandating policy has ranked as the top priority.
The TMC said the drive was achieving success with 9% more companies reporting 80% compliance on their air programmes.
Mary Ellen George, general manager of Advito, BCD's consulting arm, said with business travel at an all time high, there was pressure on hotel and flight availability.
"As a result, companies are being creative to keep costs down. They are striving to enhance communication to travellers to keep them focused, informed and on task; they are optimising spend data during negotiations to secure effective deals; and they are using differentiated pricing to push lower-cost transactions via online booking tools," she said.
The survey which was released at the National Business Travel Association annual convention in Boston this week, questioned 219 of BCD's clients around the world.
Among the key findings were that the vast majority of respondents (87%) said cost was the driving force of their air programme.
A good majority (68%) used automated expense systems. But while the figure for America was 73%, it dropped to 58% in Europe.
The survey also found that only 28% of companies implemented their policy globally.
Satisfaction with online booking tools was high with 80% of respondents rating their particular facility as excellent. But the survey found that the average adoption rate was only 47%.
But it was on hotels bookings where the least progress was made.
BCD said only 46% of respondents said that the travel policy required travellers to go through the preferred booking channel.
It meant that there was actually a drop in the number of hotel bookings made through the preferred agency or online compared to 2006.
* see BTE Analysis
* see BTE's recruitment site www.businesstraveljobs.com