Keeping Track of Travel

And you might consistently miss significant cost-saving opportunities. Consider unused tickets, which most travel managers say collectively cost U.S. businesses millions every year. Business travelers frequently make last-minute travel plans and cancellations, and their companies often swallow the ticket cost, sometimes unknowingly. However, a travel-management company will keep tabs on its clients’ unused tickets and, whenever possible, apply them to future trips.

Online or Agent-Assisted?

Employees at travel-management companies offer clients the flexibility of booking travel on line or through an agent. By booking flights, hotels, and cars on line, companies can avoid paying service fees. Yet sidestepping service fees doesn’t always translate into cost savings.

Consider the findings of a 2005 study conducted by Topaz International, Ltd., a Portland, Oregon–based travel industry benchmarking and consulting company. The study compared the price of corporate airfares booked by agencies and those booked on public Web sites, including Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. Fares booked by a travel-management company in 2005 were, on average, $56 less than the same flights booked on line.

“People don’t have to book on line to save money,” says Amy Boche, co-president of Blue Ribbon Business Travel International, a travel-management company in Edina. “I think a lot of companies look at an agency and say, ‘They cost me money because I have to pay a surcharge.’ Sure, we might charge them $32, but they might not be looking at the fact that we just saved them $300 on an airline ticket because we found them a better deal by checking everything that’s available, not just what you see on Orbitz.”

Krebsbach says the point-A-to-point-B-type trips, accounting for about half of Personnel Decisions’ travel, are booked on line. “For more complex trips, even if it’s just Minneapolis to Dallas to Memphis and back, you want an agent touching it,” he says. 

With today’s sophisticated booking technology, however, online- and agent-booked trips are combined and reported together. In fact, using such online booking tools as Cliqbooks and Travelport, travel-management companies can create customized booking and reporting systems for each client. “We take the program, and we retrofit it to each specific company and their travel policy, so it’s essentially their tool,” Boche explains.

“If you have preferred agreements with Northwest Airlines or Delta Air Lines, that’s built into the tool so that those are the first flights to come up. Or maybe your employees cannot book a ticket over $350. If the rates are over $350, the tool automatically sends an e-mail to a supervisor for their approval.”