Hotel spend comprises approximately 39% of a company’s total travel expenditure and is typically the largest category of unmanaged spend.  Corporate hotel spend can be broken out into three distinct categories:  Transient, Long Term Stay, and Meetings.  It is important for companies to create an integrated enterprise wide sourcing strategy based on these combined categories of hospitality spend and focus on projected hotel program savings. 

For most companies with an international presence, Travel and Expenses (T&E) are the 3^rd largest indirect cost component of the total budget. Consolidating your travel management spend globally is not an easy process, but partnering with a global travel management company with a comprehensive understanding of what is realistic and taking cultural differences into account is the best advice for companies.

Finding an efficient way to manage costs associated with business travel is a crucial step in realizing savings from your travel budget.  A corporate credit card solution is a key strategy in gaining efficiencies; reducing costs and managing travel spend.  Here are the top benefits you can achieve through a Corporate Payment System like AirPlus:

To build or buy… that is the question. A couple of years ago we started looking in the market place for a new management reporting system. We narrowed our search down to four suppliers before rolling our sleeves up and digging in to the functionality of each product. Some products excelled at the standard reports an agency generally sends out. Other products had sleek dashboards you could interact with.

What a great event!  The GBTA conference in Indianapolis was the first ever GBTA event based solely on sports teams and athletic organizations and it was quite impressive.  For a first time event, the turnout was outstanding and the attendees were an energetic group who were very excited to get the sessions started.  What I thought was interesting….and refreshing, was that the topic of pure service fees wasn’t a topic at all; these organizations are more than happy to pay agency/provider fees as long as their athletes and coaching staff are well accommodated and, above all, safe.  Of course, ancillary fees were a big topic and it was amazing to me how many organizations utilize express shipping/cargo and ground transportation to move large amounts of equipment, dodging ancillary airline fees altogether.  Most everyone I spoke to was eager to get to the GBTA Annual Conference in Denver to see how the whole ancillary fee issue will shake out. 

In today’s tough economy, more and more companies are looking for creative ways to increase their sales revenue without incurring the costs of travel, especially in light of increasing airfare, hotel and ancillary fee costs.  Not only can smart demand management initiatives save time and money for your company, it also can reduce your company’s carbon dioxide emissions footprint by decreasing the amount of trips taken. Research indicates that an increase in employee productivity is quite possible as well. Below are five different demand management initiatives that can help your company save on its bottom line:

Transparency is key in the corporate travel management industry. After all, if you don’t know what your travelers are spending, then how can you properly negotiate, plan and budget for it?  As a topic that’s plagued the industry with grave uncertainty and questions, airline ancillary fees have pushed us to be forward thinking and adapt to this ever changing marketplace to bring clarity to the topic.  In fact, for two years I’ve personally traveled across the US and Europe speaking on this very topic at numerous industry educational events.  I did this to highlight the challenges to find one standard reporting approach and to represent AirPlus as advocate for an industry-wide solution through my participation in advisory boards, panels and think tanks.  

Well as you have probably read, American Airlines is pushing Direct Connect as their desired new model in which to distribute their services.  American has asserted the current distribution model is obosolete and cannot adequately provide travelers both fares and ancillary products and services.  In addition, American indicates the direct connect model will reduce American's overall distribution costs which weigh in as part of their top 5 expenditures. 

Travizon is a global TMC known for its innovation, award winning service....and now its ridiculously informative and fun blog about our industry.  This blog is dedicated to all things cool; yes, we think having a resource for business travel tips and tricks, industry best practices and news from our global vendor partners are pretty darn cool.  Are we travel geeks?  Maybe.  Are you?  Hope so.  We’ll also use this blog introduce you to some of our team members who will share some of their past, current and funny industry stories.

Business travelers often search a wide variety of websites to seek the lowest airfares and hotel rates possible, in an effort to spend company funds wisely and get to the best deals. The perception is that the Internet is the place to go for the lowest fares and best prices for all travel. But contrary to popular belief, this is not always the case. Below are some common misconceptions about booking travel on the internet: