A growing number of companies in America are using online bookings as a way to cut travel costs according to a new survey of 374 chief financial officers (CFOs).
44% said they booked online to reduce costs compared with 31% in 2003.
More than two thirds (68%) of the CFOs said they had made “significant” savings by using online bookings.
The CFO Business Travel Survey was carried out by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, GetThere and Travelocity Business.
The survey found that the companies of 31% of the CFOs questioned now said all trips had to be booked online. A further 50% said that some should be booked online. Only 19% had no mandate on bookings.
The main areas of concern for the CFOs were: staying within the travel budget (91%), employees' safety (91%), accurate monitoring of the travel spend (89%), the ability to locate travellers (86%), whether the travel agent was getting the best prices (86%) and the cost of the travel agent (75%).
But if online bookings were a way to cut costs, the CFOs still saw limiting travel as the best way to reduce spend (68%). Adjusting the travel policy (55%), better tracking procedures (48%) and switching travel agency (29%) were also seen as ways to cut costs.
Four fifths (83%) of the CFOs were also seemingly aware that the online travel agencies offered lower service fees.
One piece of good news for the traveller was that companies were less driven to cut costs. 60% of the CFOs said they were not “heavily focused” on cutting costs compared with 40% in 2003 while only 34% said they were, compared with 54% in the previous year.