Business travel within UK government departments is likely to be singled out for cuts in the country's forthcoming spending review, Jeremy Broadgate, procurement director for Burley Street Travel, warned.
He said Francis Maude, the UK coalition government's cabinet office minister, was looking carefully a selected "commodities", two of which were travel and fleet.
Broadgate, who was speaking at the Management solutions UK/ACTE autumn forum in London on September 14, said it was just a question of waiting until the Chancellor George Osborne review was announced on October 20.
Roger Peters, senior category manager for travel at Xchanging Procurement Services, told delegates: "Travel and fleet are always the first to be looked at but mandation and discipline is how you would save money."
But Patrick Kuziw, travel manager northern Europe for International SOS, said that corporates were also cutting travel and the government was just following their lead.
Another travel manager said he expected the cuts to be "incredibly harsh and they will happen incredibly quickly form a travel perspective."
He added: "It is interesting that they will do it without mandation but it is coming quite hard and quite fast."
Alan Ryan, regional travel manager EMEA for SITA, said: "I f they are going to cut costs, you will have to look at travel in a different way.
He suggested the industry look more at video conferencing, why are people travelling and "some type of approval process" for travel.
Many among the delegates said there needed to be more questions asked about why people were travelling.
Steve Newton, travel buyer for the Prudential, said: "People should ask if it were your money, would you do it?
"We really want to change the basic mentality. It is not easy but it does give you long term results. I would never say people should not travel but people have to be sensible.
"We have got to look at the bigger perspective not just quick wins."
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