Business travel management is the art of reconciling everything: Cost and CO2-reductions, efficiency before, during and after the trip as well as the comfort and safety of travelers. - a guest article by Katharina Riederer
The COVID-19 pandemic has helped us to identify travel activities that can also be replaced by video conferencing. Without a doubt, there is no more effective measure to reduce travel costs and the associated CO2-footprint.
However, service-oriented companies and service departments can often only offer their services in conjunction with travel activities: Services such as installations, maintenance or repairs require on-site experts with special tools. Consulting assignments, on the other hand, usually involve tailoring general solutions to the cultural nuances of the client company. However, it is difficult to experience culture through selective, virtual interactions. Physical proximity to the customer also lays the foundation for a relationship that goes beyond business benefits. This is why personal contact is often essential.
What factors need to be considered in travel management?
Some business travel and field operations must continue to take place during a global pandemic in order to keep operations running. For companies, these travel activities are more than just an additional cost item on the balance sheet.
The corporate culture is also reflected on business trips and field service assignments, even when employees spend their time away from the company premises. In particular, employees' sense of esteem and freedom is significantly influenced by how the company travels on business. Can I choose a hotel that meets my individual needs? What administrative effort is involved in a business trip? Do I feel appreciated by my employer for the sacrifices I make in my private life to make business trips possible?
The conditions under which a trip takes place are just as individual as the needs of the traveler. Business trips and field assignments are subject to a highly fluctuating travel market that is difficult to predict. According to DER Touristik, hotel prices in Amsterdam, for example, have plummeted by more than 50 percent as a result of the pandemic. In addition, the individual requirements of each customer are also reflected in the travel arrangements. Do I have to start maintenance at the customer's premises at 9 a.m., or might it even be necessary to arrive the day before?
How can you organize business trips and field assignments better?
Travel policies can be an effective tool for reducing travel costs and the associated CO2-to stem the flow of waste. However, as in any other area of management, over-specification of guidelines means that they cannot be applied in practice. If the price volatility of the market offer is not adequately covered in the travel guidelines, they can only be complied with in a fraction of bookings.
Do not set price limits!
There is a psychological and a market-based reason for this. A price limit can be compared to the speed limit for car drivers. If I'm allowed to drive at 50 km/h, then I'm certainly not going to limit my speed to 40 km/h. If, on the other hand, I only have to expect a fine when I reach a speed of 60 km/h, then it won't hurt me to drive at 59 km/h either. Similar behaviour can also be observed with regard to price limits for business travel bookings, especially for large and correspondingly anonymous organizations.
In addition, upper limits for hotel costs per night are not perceived by travelers as indicative if these upper limits do not represent an adequate reference value in many cases. However, this is unavoidable with a static upper limit, as prices not only fluctuate greatly from place to place, but also within a time frame due to trade fairs and other major events.
Exchange ideas with competitors!
It may sound counterproductive at first to support each other among competitors. However, if you don't do this as a business travel manager, you will lose out on synergy effects that even competing large corporations share. This is not just about sharing experience, but above all about exploiting economies of scale. As in any other purchasing department, you should also make use of joint representation of interests in business travel management in front of providers such as travel agencies and booking platforms. You can only achieve a higher weighting of your often industry-specific interests with these providers by working together.
Maintain close contact with your business travelers!
This is the only way to ensure that your travel policy and IT system landscape meet the individual needs of travelers. Make this exchange a routine. Make changes based on the voices of those affected and not just the ideas of management. In this way, you can design the most effective business travel program for your company and also implement field service assignments more effectively.
How do I take into account market fluctuations and the individual needs of travelers?
The biggest challenge in business travel management is to cover market dynamics and individual traveler needs with static travel policies. More extensive travel policies complicate the business travel booking process for the traveler in proportion to the complexity of the market dynamics. Rewarding/incentivizing cost-effective and environmentally friendly travel behavior, on the other hand, offers a simple mechanism.
The decisive factor for the incentive is benchmark behavior based on historical travel data. If an employee opts for a cheaper and/or more environmentally friendly option, they can be rewarded either with a static incentive or directly with a share of the savings. This not only makes the employee feel directly involved by the business travel management, but also puts them in the position of booking a private trip. As a result, business travelers treat the company's resources in a similar way to their own savings.
Katharina Riederer
Katharina Riederer is co-founder & CEO of eco.mio. Her vision is to drive a shift towards more conscious and sustainable business travel in today's connected world. eco.mio is the first employee-centric business software that enables companies to achieve their climate goals while realizing significant savings on business travel. She came up with the idea for eco.mio when she took a sabbatical during her career as a strategy consultant at Roland Berger and reflected on today's business travel philosophy. Before going into strategy consulting, Katharina studied mechanical engineering at ETH Zurich and the University of Michigan and worked as a project manager at the student consultancy ETH juniors.
