Travel Management Companies (TMC's) or business travel agents to you and me, have hit the headlines because they are worried that they may very soon be extinct. The days of the high powered super-wizzo all singing all dancing TMC are numbered. It's high noon at the call centre. So, if you are a big travel user and wondering what to do, I'll tell you.
Let me first tell you about Murray's two laws of business travel. They will also explain explain why TMC's are barking up the wrong tree, or tailfin, if you prefer. Law Number 1: Any TMC (or travel agent for that matter) is only as good as the person who deals with your query. It doesn't matter what the super dynamic chaps at base camp say, if the guy answering your call does not know when to call a consolidator (cheapo ticket person) or how to fiddle a flight via Lisbon you are wasting your time. Law Number 2: The time when you (that is, the client) pick up the telephone to book a flight 99% of all cost saving opportunities have been lost.
Acting on Law 1 means that the first thing you should do is get rid of any TMC that does not have thoroughly experienced staff. Not "well trained" I mean experienced. They are not the same. An experienced business travel agent asks the right questions, gets behind what you are trying to do, thinks about it and comes up with a solution. I used to say that anyone under 50 is far to young to come into travel and now more so. Airlines are up to every trick in the book and business people are getting screwed left, right and centre. What you need is a wiley old fox who has been around the block a few times and can beat them at their own game. So, go out and find an agent who knows their onions. Probably a one or two man band just down the road.
A spin off from this is what are you using a TMC for? Any big company may find some mileage in using a balance of agent and DIY. Let's face it, if you have a person going from London to Paris at 06:30 Monday morning and back on Friday at 17:30 you can write policy until it comes out your ears, at the end of the day there is (probably) only one seat left and the person will have to take it at whatever price it comes out at. As soon as you need to go either medium or long haul, or the journey is from A to B to C to D etc - then you use an agent. That is, please note, when you need an agent - not an order taker. A wiley, been round the block a few times, knows the tricks, good old fashioned agent - Okay, so you get the picture.
Law Number 2 fits in neatly here. Let's go back to that Paris trip. We know that we are stuck with £380 for the trip and we have policised (eh?) and analaysed the trip to death. What no-one has bothered about is why was the guy or gal going in the first place? And why on earth was it organised for 06:00 on a Monday morning? At the risk of being boring, I say that the easiest and quickest way to save money on travel is not to travel in the first place. So, we get the various departments by the short and curlys and tell them that they can only spend £50 going to Paris, the rest comes out of their pocket - and deal with it. After all, Why does a meeting have to be at 11:00, why not 15:00? Fits in with the off-peak flights? Not enough time? Speed up the agenda. We need a day. So, what's wrong with Wednesday? It's a client. Well, unless it's a broken down bit of kit, even clients are human and may just have the ability to understand that 0600 Monday is a damned expensive time at 30,000 feet. You only knew about the meeting 17:55 on Friday? Yeah, And the reason you have a PA is? Heard about video conferencing? I mean you can get a webcam and use SKYPE and the whole meeting costs precisely zippo.
Okay, maybe a bit over the top. But the point I am making is that organisations need to think about why they are travelling. It is not the cost of trips that cost money, it is the number of them. It does not matter one iota if your TMC saves you £20 on a trip to Hamburg. If the trip could have been avoided, then even paying £1 is too much. The answer to this lies in how the organisation views the need to travel and the policy needs to focus not on how one gets from A to B but on why they are going in the first place, including lead times, travelling times of the day etc. Naturally this means that everyone in the organisation needs to be on board. But that's your problem, not mine!
Murray Harrold