Half of travel managers in Australia can’t show their bosses how much money their travel programme actually saves the business, according to research from Corporate Traveller and the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).
The research also found that 67 per cent of companies say weighing up management fees against the value they get back is their biggest challenge when choosing a travel partner. That’s partly because a lot of the savings never show up anywhere. Negotiated fares and discounted rates appear on invoices, but things like waived change fees, free hotel extras, and the time a travel consultant spends sorting problems instead of an employee doing it themselves usually don’t get counted at all. Corporate Traveller’s own customer data shows 48 per cent of Australian business travellers say time saved matters most to them, but until now nobody has put a dollar figure on that time.
Tom Walley, global managing director of Corporate Traveller, said this creates a gap where booking direct looks like the better deal by default: “A flight comes in $50 cheaper on a consumer site, a hotel rate looks lower if you book direct, and suddenly the question becomes: why are we paying a management fee?” He added that what people don’t see is “the $100 change fee that was waived, the hotel inclusion worth $40 a night, the after-hours call the traveller would have made themselves, or the disruption their employee never had to manage themselves.”
A dashboard that puts a dollar figure on time saved
Corporate Traveller has launched what it describes as the first dashboard of its kind in the industry, letting finance leaders see exactly what they’re getting back compared to what they’re paying in fees, covering flight and hotel savings, waived fees, credits and time saved. Flight savings are worked out by comparing the price paid against the public fare available at the same moment. Hotel extras are converted into a dollar value per stay. Time spent on things like complicated bookings, last-minute changes and sorting out travel disruptions is now tracked and given a dollar value too.
Craig Ackerley, shared services finance manager at Consolidated Power Projects Australia, said: “The reporting and data analytics give us real visibility into our spend and how airline pricing shifts over time. With our flights and accommodation taken care of, it gives us back valuable time in the business to remain hands-on with daily operations.”
Walley added: “Every dollar we save a customer is visible to them from their very first booking, against our management fee, on demand… The fee stops looking like a cost on top and starts looking like a measurable return on investment.”
The dashboard is available now to Corporate Traveller customers in Australia and New Zealand.
