October 07, 2009 • Austin, Texas - BCD Travel senior vice president of strategic marketing and technology planning April Bridgeman last month spoke here at The Beat
Live conference about the impact on managed travel of mobile technologies and social networking. She referenced "fansumerism," which in a managed travel environment refers to travelers gravitating to mobile travel tools "that are validated by the marketplace" but "may not be sanctioned by a corporate travel management program."
According to Bridgeman, typical business travelers today are managing their journeys and planning their travel "using things like SeatGuru and TripIt," as well as "Farecast or Yapta to try to predict when they can get the lowest fare for their company. The management program no longer is controlling the toolkit, the process or the experience that the user is grabbing for themselves."
Travelers, she added, "don't expect a travel management program to provide all services at any point in time--there are already 2,000 travel-related applications for the iPhone; that's overwhelming--but they do expect programs to tie core services together and help them make sense of their endless options and some of the key things that they need to do to get through their business trip."
Corporate travelers also have become "rational consumers," Bridgeman asserted. "They know more than a typical agent knows about their trip. They have gone on to these 2,000 apps or 4,000 Web sites and have learned. That is a very big factor behind why managed travel has to rethink its boundaries. It sounds crazy to let a traveler do whatever they want to find a lower fare or possibly think about buying a leisure package for a business trip or other things to save money," she acknowledged. "It raises a lot of questions. It is totally transforming to think of how we move from a totally closed environment to embracing tools that are being used by your travelers today to enrich their travel experience, enhance their satisfaction and ultimately reduce your costs."
She provided the example of
Google's travel management program in which travelers are rewarded if they find rates cheaper than benchmarks. "Travelers can get really creative in how they beat that benchmark and earn their points," she said.
After her presentation, Bridgeman fielded questions from audience members and session moderator Tony D'Astolfo, vice president of worldwide sales at Rearden Commerce.
Could fansumerism equal a loss of control for travel management?
It does equal a loss of control in the way we thought of control before, but what are you ultimately trying to control: the traveler's behavior or your ability to achieve your objectives in the program?
Regarding the Google program, where is the balance between finding the best rate and maintaining employee productivity?
You do have to strike that balance. Individuals are not starting from scratch to find the best rate. They are leveraging what their network is telling them. They are sharing best practices very openly. Companies like Google and others do encourage their employees to participate very significantly in what you might consider non-work-related activities.
What is the role for the travel management company in developing or sourcing mobile apps for a managed travel program?
The role of the TMC is to help string together what is a significantly fragmented traveler experience today; not string it all together but string together the things that are core to travel management and leave enough on the fringe for people to use things they really prefer from a personal perspective. For example, we might believe it is core to have a really robust shopping engine, a very robust set of booking tools available in multiple channels and a very robust set of itinerary management solutions, but we might not get into destination content and other things that are somewhat tangential during the journey unless we believe it can drive value into a program. One of those things might be helping travelers access leisure services while on a business trip. As we know from studies, people often combine personal and business experiences, and if we believe it can help offset the cost of services or possibly provide our customers with some other revenue opportunities through commissions and what-not that they hadn't had before, we may consider pushing that into the set of what traditionally had been very fragmented services.
Are your travel management customers receptive to adjusting their travel programs, and are they asking questions or hiding under a rock?
All the above. We have customers who are pushing the envelope, who want to bring in services that they may not have been comfortable bringing in and embracing before, who are already joining perhaps their corporate social environment to participate in it, to learn from their travelers, to teach their travelers. One of the things that the more enlightened travel managers are doing is taking the opportunity to really drive education out to the traveler population on how they can make better choices to achieve those objectives. Then we have some who are doing some basic things and just trying to learn what Twitter is and what their travelers may be doing, how things are changing in the rest of their organization. And then we have those who are just really concerned about what it means for their program.
Do you have a recommendation for the audience?
Be careful as to what you make a formal part of your travel program. I was corrected very vociferously at [the National Business Travel Association conference in San Diego in August] by a Millennial [a.k.a. a member of Generation Y, born between the mid-1970s and early 1990s] who said, "April, you really have to watch what you make part of the travel program, because we are just going to think that whatever you put out there is propaganda. So if you are going to bring a closed social network into the travel program, no one is going to rely on it. If you put out ads around the hotels, it's propaganda. We're going to go out to our trusted advisors and find out anyway."
