
My buddy, travel industry consultant
Scott Gillespie recently laid out some drastic changes that he foresees for our industry in a great piece in
The Beat. He's also written much about this in his blog:
Gillespie's Guide to Travel+Procurement .
Scott is watching "the battle for control and compliance" during the travel shopping/booking process unfold, and he mentions such
"minor" winds of change as:
- Travel managers losing the ability to apply policy controls to corporate travelers' booking
choices, with some managers essentially side-stepping controls and letting travelers book as they wish
- The appeal to travelers of smartphones and travel apps
The "lightning bolts" that warrant our full attention, however: - Rearden's technology that curates travelers' options into a few categories (e.g., for budget-minded, time-sensitive and high-touch travelers) thereby challenging the traditional corporate definition of a lowest logical fare, and giving travel managers a new concept to deal with: the most "valuable" fare.
- Short's Travel co-opting every OTA's shopping abilities (Short's Travel technology applies
corporate discounts to travelers' shopping choices -- even those of online travel agencies). This could give rise to lighter, cleaner self-booking tools (sort of like the netbook vs. the laptop) for corporate travelers "because they won't carry the baggage of the search/shop functionality." They'll be designed to do just self-booking.
- Voice-based user interfaces from Apple (for example, Siri), Google and Evature -- in other
words, a convenient, voice-activated way of booking -- will beat out compliance to corporate
booking tools.
- American Airlines' public questioning of the value of corporate contracts. Frank Morogiello, VP of Global Sales at American Airlines, recently said publicly that airline CFOs are questioning the value of corporate contracts -- chiefly because many companies aren't moving targeted and desired market share for the carriers to warrant sustained discounting.
What we're witnessing is a new move toward non-compliance, and technology is leading us there by the nose. Thank you, Scott, and thanks, too, to
The Beat, for bringing these trends out to the forefront where we can look at them and analyze ways of meeting the challenges or adopting them.
You've heard me say many times that travel and meetings managers need to stop looking down at their desks everyday and occasionally look up to see what's coming down the turnpike! You need to familiarize yourself with new technologies and investigate who within your organization are using them to circumvent policy and lowest pricing options. From there, I guess it's up to you which road you want to take in order to increase compliance: use new technologies to your advantage or beef up policies to mandate that travelers use designated agencies or OTAs in order to utilize corporate discounts.
Perhaps you need to do both!