eXpert insights

While most of the industry was resting last week in advance of what promises to be an exciting year in business travel, the EXPERT INSIGHT elves were working into the wee hours of 2011 to post the last Best Practice Roadmap report of the year: Course of Action – Update Travel Policy Today.

Careful travel policy development and on-going review is essential to successful business travel management. Based on analysis of nearly 100 business travel policies in force today, the report examines existing business practices to highlight where companies likely need to develop and revise their documents and compliance strategies to best address current industry trends in business travel.

Annual subscribers to EXPERT INSIGHTS should have received the report PDF by email Friday and it is also archived right here on btX for them in the EXPERT INSIGHTS section. Any travel professional who shared a policy with us for the benchmarking can request their copy of the report at AdvisoryServices@aexp.com.

We are also offering a limited trial subscription to EXPERT INSIGHTS through the first quarter to anyone who emails before the end of January. We plan to do even more valuable work with our unparalleled aggregate business data, unique industry insight, and travel program optimization consulting experience to help companies use travel as a competitive advantage this year.

And as always if anyone has any suggestions of industry issues to investigate, please let us know! Here’s to a great 2012!!

While most of the industry was resting last week in advance of what promises to be an exciting year in business travel, the EXPERT INSIGHT elves were working into the wee hours of 2011 to post the last Best Practice Roadmap report of the year: Course of Action – Update Travel Policy Today.

Careful travel policy development and on-going review is essential to successful business travel management. Based on analysis of nearly 100 business travel policies in force today, the report examines existing business practices to highlight where companies likely need to develop and revise their documents and compliance strategies to best address current industry trends in business travel.

Annual subscribers to EXPERT INSIGHTS should have received the report PDF by email Friday and it is also archived right here on btX for them in the EXPERT INSIGHTS section. Any travel professional who shared a policy with us for the benchmarking can request their copy of the report at AdvisoryServices@aexp.com.

We are also offering a limited trial subscription to EXPERT INSIGHTS through the first quarter to anyone who emails before the end of January. We plan to do even more valuable work with our unparalleled aggregate business data, unique industry insight, and travel program optimization consulting experience to help companies use travel as a competitive advantage this year.

And as always if anyone has any suggestions of industry issues to investigate, please let us know! Here’s to a great 2012!!

While much of the industry took a break the past week to rest up in advance of what promises to be an exciting year in business travel, the EXPERT INSIGHTS elves were working until the wee hours of 2011 to put out our last Best Practice Roadmap report of the year: Course of Action - Update Travel Policy Today.

Careful travel policy development and on-going review is essential to successful business travel management. Based on analysis of nearly 100 policies in force at companies today, this report examines existing business practices to highlight where companies likely need to develop and revise their documents and compliance strategies to best address current industry trends in business travel.

EXPERT INSIGHTS subscribers should have received the PDF report in their email boxes Friday, but can also access the report and the whole archive of research, including the 2012 Forecast, in the EXPERT INSIGHTS section right here on btX.

Anyone else interested in a free trial of EXPERT INSIGHTS can email AdvisoryServices@aexp.com through the end of January and we'll be happy to grant access to all of our industry updates, best practice reports, price benchmarking data in the Busienss Travel Monitor, and Forecasts through the end of Q1.

We plan to do even more this year to use our access to the largest repository of aggregate business data, unique industry insight, and travel management program optimization consulting experience to help organizations achieve a competitive advantage through their travel programs in 2012.

Here's to a great new year!

Well it has been an intensive few weeks but we have just one more compliance hurdle to go through before we can publish our latest and greatest Forecast ever! 

And I can now confirm that new this year are detailed air predictions in more countries in EMEA (Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and South Africa), hotel details on 29 more cities in North America (400 in total), 273 more cities in EMEA (400 in total) and two more cities in Latin America (55 in total).

In addition, this year’s Forecast has a more sophisticated car rental predictive model, breaking out base rate price increases from expected increases in average daily rental rates, and provides these details for 15 individual countries in North America and EMEA.

Finally, the 2012 Forecast also includes new gross domestic product (GDP) data by country to provide general economic context and commentary on the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations on prices paid (all currency data points in the Forecast are normalized in USD) to help companies put changes into relevant perspective.

If you do not have access to eXpert insights but would like a copy of the Forecast, it is $495 USD for American Express Global Business Travel clients and $995 for all others this year. We really invest a lot of time, budget, and resources into producing the most comprehensive and detailed Forecast in the industry -- so if benchmarking just one hotel market expected price increases to what suppliers try to get out of you can keep your program costs down, it pays for itself in no time!

It's that time of year again... when we release our predictions for business travel pricing changes expected in the coming year.

For the 2012 edition we have added more countries for air, more cities for hotel, and a new more sophisticated predictive model for ground transportation in all of the key countries covered globally.

The eXpert insights Global Business Travel Forecast 2012 will be distributed on Friday, September 30, to eXpert insights subscribers. A webinar reviewing the report will be held for clients in October.

For anyone interested in subscribing to eXpert insights research to receive a copy of the Forecast, please email: AdvisoryServices@aexp.com.

And May and April for that matter?? Well anyone that works with me knows three weeks without a laptop can make anyone feel completely out of touch - literally and figuratively!

So while I will wonder if The Adjustment Bureau stepped in to make sure I left my laptop on a connecting flight in Philly, I am only now getting a chance to get the latest eXpert insights research out to clients - including the May Business Travel Monitor North America and the Q2 BTM Published Airfares for Asia Pacific - but also to look at them and see what has been going on.

For those of you not on the lucky distribution list, average domestic fare paid by North American-based business travelers last month was up 2% from April and 7% from 2010. International average fare paid was also up 2% and 9% year over year. This translates into average cost per mile was .31 domestic; .45 international.

In the hotel world, average booked rates were up 4% month over month as well as year over year. Domestically that means an average nightly rate of $156; internationally $254.

Finally, some good news in car rental: average daily rate was $70, down 2% from April and 2% from May 2010. Average total cost of rental though was up 1%, tied to 4% growth in the average length of rental at 3.12 days.

So while we will wait until September to issue our official prognostications on expected changes in pricing being paid by the poor road warriors so frazzled they leave their laptops on planes next year, I leave you with this: if you can't do anything about what the suppliers are going to be charging for their services out there, what can you do to help people stay productive?

If travel management professionals are not partnering with their information technology departments on supporting mobile communications and applications... you should be. Now where is my Blackberry??

The latest Business Travel Monitor (March 2011) confirms it: there are no more bargains to be had from the airlines for business travelers. Especially if they wait until the last minute to book a trip.

Average published domestic fares for the month of March for lowest discount ticket types (highly-restricted) were up 17% compared to February 2011 and up 30% from March 2010. These published fares do not include taxes and fees, including fuel surcharges.

Average domestic fares paid by American Express Business Travel clients (which include all types of seats and fares and taxes and fees paid at point of sale) were up 5% for the month and 11% year over year. The average fare paid for international business trips was up 7% month over month and 12% year over year.

What does this mean to managed travel? If the travel industry could get any more complex, it has. It has never been easy to determine who pays what for which seat when and why, but add in increased taxes (see Prashanth Kuchibhotla's analysis of airline tax implications in this month's eXpert Industry Insights), service fees, surcharges and capacity controls and the true cost of travel becomes ever more elusive.

Companies should consider then the value of the data they get on their programs, the insights into their travelers' behaviors, and competitve industry best practices to drive optimal expenditures on travel today. With the on-going challenges in the industry around distribution models and renumeration for all kinds of services, getting accurate and complete data has become even more difficult, let alone analyzing it for meaningful patterns.

But data is where the true value of managed travel is not only revealed but achieved as demand management takes center stage in cost-control tactics today. What kind of real investment has your company made in its travel data and analysis? Can anyone afford not to in light of the nature of the industry itself today?

This spring we are conducting a Policy Best Practice Roadmap report to help our clients see not only what the most recent hot topics are in the area of travel policy but also to be able to compare to their peer sets (size of company.) And if we get enough fresh policies we can also do a benchmark by industry.

Best in class travel policy is key to driving travel cost-effectiveness as well as can be hugely influential in recruiting and retaining employees - I recently heard a statistic that 20% of top performers at companies will change companies as soon as the job market opens up, so ensuring that your company is not behind in supporting employees' productivity on the road is going to be a must for travel program managers this year. So far I am already surprised at the number of policies we have seen that are out of date - some as old as 2006!

So to all of our btX friends, if you would like to help improve the dataset and get a complimentary copy of the final report expected in May, please send us the most recent version of your policy, noting when it was last updated, and we will return the favor by emailing you this valuable report (and inviting you to the btX webinar!) when it is complete!

If interested, please email me at christa.d.manning@aexp.com and your policy will be kept confidential and only used in aggregate. Thanks in advance for your consideration! 

Although the role of eXpert insights is to provide market information and best practice advice to procurement and travel management program professionals, frequently we get asked to provide tips to business travelers on how to get the most out of their business trips themselves.

Here is one I learned first hand last week: check in online. En route to a meeting at 2 pm in Atlanta last Wednesday, I was not even rushing when I parked at the airport shortly after 9 am for a 9:45 am flight. As luck would have it, Boston Logan central parking was not even full (pray tell what ARE they going to do when unemployment is not 9%??) so I sauntered through the shiny escalator tunnels into the terminal and swiped my card at the kiosk.

Now as I drank my latte as I watched the kiosk scrolling "Please Wait.... Searching, Searching, Searching..." I did think it odd it was taking so long but simply chalked it up to the likely ancient airline technology mainframes on the back end. I won't be able to confirm what it was that took the kiosk so long to come back to me, but it was the bad news it delivered that was the issue: sorry you can not check in for this flight at this kiosk.

So getting a little nervous I waited in line to get a check in agent: sorry honey, it is 9:18, it is too late to check in for this flight. When she called the gate they said tough luck. I seriously though she was joking.

While she took another 10 minutes to find an alternative flight, and waitlist me for another, I asked if I could simply get a boarding pass and throw myself on the mercy of the gate agents. "They don't want to see you," she said. "It's a security risk."

Perplexed by this experience, I shared it with colleagues that evening at our meeting. One had a simple explanation: she was on a 7 am flight that was cancelled and there were dozens of people waiting to get on my plane. Including lots of senior frequent fliers, and we all know how airlines feel about those customers.

So while I will never know what made the kiosk hold me up until it was too late to use it to secure my seat, I do know this: if I had done online check in, I would have been fine. Now I just have to upgrade to iPhone 4 to get the airline's online app to work...

Air & Business Travel News posted writer Bob Papworth's in-depth review of business travel industry outlooks originally published in Buying Business Travel on its site online this past weekend. While drawing from many sources, the story led (no pun intended) with one of the most colorful introductions I have seen in my tenure as both a media and travel professional.

Invoking the song "Fortune Teller" from former Led Zepplin front man "the flaxen-ringleted one" Robert Plant's recent solo album with Allison Kraus, Papworth noted that many business travel management professionals are getting free forecasts from the industry even if the news is not so positive.

Noting "If you can get your trend analysis for diddly-squat, you’re quids in" (which I think is British slang for being ahead of the game, wait, is ahead of the game American slang??) he goes on to do a wrap of many industry sources of information in addition to American Express Business Travel's eXpert insights: Advito, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, HRG, Guild of Travel Management Companies, Association of Train Operating Companies, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lodging Econometrics, and the International Air Transport Association.

However, the most valuable quote - and perhaps ironic - in the story is near the end when he quotes Andrew Burch, Hillgate Travel’s business development manager. Burch notes that procurement's focus "will shift from lowest price to best value" following high profile scrutiny of outsourcing disasters such as the Gulf oil rig explosion.

One could say the same thing about free sources of industry information: you get what you pay for.

For the full story, visit the site: http://www.abtn.co.uk/feature/0515470-hostages-fortune

In the last few weeks (now that 2011 business travel budgets have been restocked!) I have visited both New York and London and had the pleasure of staying at two properties that have been bucking the unbundling trend by providing delightfully free services to support the business traveler.

In New York I was offered the house car to take me to the office in the morning which in the cold snowy January weather the East Coast of the US has been experiencing was a welcome surprise! It also saved me about 20 minutes of walking which allowed me to do some additional preparation work for my early morning meeting.

In London for the Business Travel and Meetings show, a cadre of colleagues and myself booked into a property that was listed closest to our main office by Victoria Station. Indeed we saved countless taxis to Belgrave House, but more importantly, the property did not charge anything for business service centre usage! 

Colleagues were able to use the Internet, scan documents, email, print -- all for nada. When we were asked our own cost center to print out booklets in the business centre at the Amex HQ, you know that is a real value!  

A preferred supplier agreement with a business hotel that is focused on traveler productivity -- and not pinching pennies -- is more important than ever. As we heard that so many properties were responding to keeping business rates flat or in the low single digits this RFP season by pulling out services that were tradtionally included, category managers must understand total cost of trip and where property partners can alleviate the expense creep that is happening more and more when employees are on the road.

A recent reconciliaton analysis of card, travel, and expense data for companies showed that the "Other" category is now more often exceeding that traditional leading player: air spend. To keep employees and the CFO happy, travel management professionals will have to consider the services they are getting -- or not getting -- from their properties more than ever.

I take the inauguaral title for this 2011 blog from one of the titans of the travel industry: Richard Branson.

An icon of change - someone who has never been daunted by the challenge to do things differently because they deserve to be done (he's going into outer space for heaven's sake!) - Branson has used this slogan when he knows in his gut he and his teams have a chance to change the way things are done for the better -- even though many may think them crazy.

I have to say that American Express Business Travel Global Advisory Services eXpert insights research practice was launched in 2009 under similar circumstances - it started with the idea to invest in primary market research on the business travel industry at a time when many were questioning the value of managed travel -- and even travel itself (given the massive cutbacks that happened in travel budgets during the Great Recession).

But since that time we have been able to identify not only best practices in managing travel today - but also to establish the impact that travel has on a company's top-line growth, a crazy concept to many CFOs that are still sharpening the T&E line item pencil.  This month we have released an update to the ROI of Travel study started in 2009 and invite everyone in the industry to read it here.

We think we are really entering a new era where travel and travel management will get the respect they deserve as competitive differentiators for businesses (in an increasingly flat and commoditized world) so we welcome the opportunity to share and discuss this information with you throughout the year. Viva travel!