CTC Masterclass - Corporate Travel Technology: Simplifying the travel programme

Transcript

Kurt Knackstedt:

Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to wherever in the world you might be joining us from. Welcome to this particular edition of the Corporate Travel Community's Masterclass. I'm Kurt Knackstedt based in Sydney, Australia, and I'll be the host for this particular session which should be a good one. We've got quite a big topic to cover. And with me joining us on this conversation, we're really excited to have three fantastic co-panelists with us here today. Coming to you from Hong Kong, we have Florence Robert from Ericsson, who's our buyer, and who will be representing the buyer's view today on our conversation, also from Hong Kong is Dionne Yuen from Egencia, and joining us from the UK, bright and early, is Paul Dear from SAP Concur. So we've got quite the globe covered today in this particular session. And again, thanks Florence, Dionne and Paul for joining us today, really excited for our conversation.

And so that conversation today is a good one. It is really all about managing the travel program, but, specifically, we're going to try to figure out, is there a way that through all of this crazy stuff going on in the industry these days, is there an opportunity for us to try to simplify business travel and simplify the corporate travel program? That might seem somewhat counterproductive in a world where everything seems to be, from one day to the next, not sure what's going to happen. And the constant challenges of managing travel in a pandemic certainly are nothing to be sneezed at, but ultimately when there's an opportunity to change the way things are done because something significant has happened to the industry, it's a good opportunity for that industry to reflect and see what could be done differently going forward. And one of the things that everyone also is really keen on is, can we use this opportunity to do things better than we have?

And so with that, we're going to try to dig into this. We've got 30 minutes to talk about it. We have a lot to cover, but we'll do our best. And we're just going to have an open conversation and really excited to see where this goes. So we're going to start off, again, talking about the pandemic is certainly the main point of conversation anywhere in the travel industry today. But if you look beyond the media and all the stories about what's happening with how the pandemic has impacted travel, there's an argument to be made that perhaps when an industry completely shuts down. Is there a chance to come out of it in a way that's actually better, easier, smoother other things that we used to do that we don't have to do going forward? And is this an opportunity for the industry to change the way they're doing things?

And so what we're looking at is, has the pandemic actually potentially helped the industry rethink and reframe how it does things? So with that, Florence, I might start with you. Do you think that there has been anything that you've learned through the pandemic that actually might help us simplify the travel program going forward, even with the challenges of the pandemic has brought, has it given us a chance to rethink what could be easier and simpler in the future?

Florence Robert:

Yeah, definitely. We already have kind of a layer of approval process or preapproval process before a trip. That's not linked to any monetary items or anything. It's more a destination and so on. But with the pandemic, because we've restricted travel to business [predictable 00:03:28], we had to think of our approval process and how we could actually streamline it and make it more efficient in the future than what we currently have. With possibility of forwarding approval into higher level, which was not really existing in our program until then. We also had the opportunity, unfortunately, in a way in some country where travel really dropped a lot or even came to zero to basically do a full refunding of our travel program basically. We took the opportunity of like reviewing the whole travel policy and trying to see ways where we could be more efficient, more straightforward.

We did a lot of education with our travelers during that downtime. Yeah, Ericsson is a telecom company. We have a lot of engineers going abroad and so on. Because they were not able to travel, we actually use that time to remind them a lot of policy compliance to the principle of the policies and so on. So we're definitely use that downtime as much as possible. And we've also taken the downtime to start to see on how we travel pattern and how we could improve that in the future once travel resume. We've not had a lot of that opportunity in [MNEA 00:04:58] because they're far away of everyone else and Northeast Asia has rebounded way, way quicker.

So that downtime has been way smaller in China or in Japan that it's been in other regions. So, it's a place where we're moving kind of along with pandemic at the moment, but for all the other regions, yes, we've definitely now worked on streamlining things and trying to find more efficient way and also to avoid some of the travel because we found out that whereas we're very profitable without traveling. And as a result, there's a big question mark that has been raised by senior management on do you need to travel that much? And we're going to have a big [refund 00:05:53] on that definitely in the future.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Okay. That's a great point there, Florence, because the saying I've been using during this is, "You rarely get a chance to change the tires on a car when it's moving." And right now the car is definitely not moving. So it is an opportunity to rethink things and retool things.

Florence Robert:

Yeah.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Sounds like you've done some of that in Ericsson which is great, but also glad to hear that some people are traveling again in this region, which is good to hear. It's a good start.

Florence Robert:

They are definitely traveling again. We're back to like 95% complete.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Wow, okay. All right.

Paul Dear:

Wow.

Kurt Knackstedt:

That's good to hear, that's what we want to hear. So thanks for that, Florence. Dionne, I guess, from your perspective as a TMC, how do you see the simplification of travel going, again, coming we still have some ways to go before things get back to whatever normal will look like at the end of the pandemic. But how do you see the role of the TMC facilitating simplification making the travel program easier to manage going forward?

Dionne Yuen:

Yeah, definitely. I think, before COVID, everyone was talking about maybe when they drop their travel policy, they will try to define what will be the essential travel. But I think once COVID has started, people have started to think about, what will it be like permissible. When we say permissible travel, which means not just only it will be compliant with the company, but it also has to make the employee who needs to travel feel comfortable, and also whether the government will allow such travel. So that's why I think when we are because... For sure the COVID will have a very big impact on the business travel industry, especially for a TMC, but then, actually, it gives us a perfect opportunity for the travel managers to think about the connection between the business travel and the employee risk.

So that's why when we try to think about how our tools can actually help all the travel managers to optimize their travel and to mitigate other travel risks. We strongly believe that having trusted sources of information are for border status, security, travel restrictions therefore lay our audit for the global destination will be a very late important tool for all our travelers. So that's why we, actually, during the COVID year although travel has dropped a lot, but then our product team actually had been working really hard and they are super busy in order how to optimize our OBT. For example, we have developed one that's called Egencia Travel Advisor, which I also tried it myself. And it's actually very user-friendly, it allows like a search result. Whenever you need to travel to certain destination, you just type it in and then it will immediately pop up the list of detailed restriction and requirement. So that the employees and the travel managers, they will be able to decide whether they should send a staff for this travel.

Actually, I would agree that technology has helped the travel managers to optimize the travel policy. But, of course, I think Florence also bring up a good point that like the previous brief conversation we also had is that not just only we need to consider the travel risk and then how the travel manager less simplify the travel management. But at the same time, I think the company is being exposed to a new risk, which is how do you work with the HR, the IT team and the legal team, and also the employees in order to rethink of business travel and how to manage manual travel. So that's why we believe that having like a trusted source of showing the global travel requirements is very important, especially the situation of COVID right now is evolving every day.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Absolutely. Thanks, Dionne. And we've already talked about a few different things with respect to things like, Florence, you talked about pre-travel approval. You talked about the booking tools, what role they play. There's a lot of information, Dionne, you mentioned that's out there around where you can go and how to travel and whether you're safe to travel and the government policies and so forth. And maybe, Paul, I'll throw this to you then, with all these different moving parts, do you see what's the role of technology in helping to manage this? Is technology keeping pace with the challenges that COVID's thrown and then how do you manage all these complexities and also try to simplify the process at the same time? Is that possible coming out of this situation?

Paul Dear:

Yeah. Thank you, Kurt. And, obviously, I completely agree with Florence and Dionne. You can see the complexities out there. You can see travel managers now looking at, for example, direct flights rather than indirect flights. You're seeing pre-trip approval, but not for costs, but for actual travel. Technology itself lends itself to that and obviously allows for management of that process. You can see also with COVID information. Concur has a tool TripIt that has that information for corporate customers and is constantly updated with vaccinations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that you'd expect it to be for the corporate traveler. So, I think technology tools do aid the traveler. But I think in this current environment, the complexity has dramatically increased. So just taking airlines as an example, you've got some airlines that have pushed ahead with NDC, where you've got other airlines that maybe have sat back a little bit.

So you've got almost increased fragmentation of channels coming through of content. You've got obviously the restrictions of travel country by country, by country. You've got certain global travel policy now. And I think to Florence's point, you've got sort of China now that it's traveling extensively. Where you've got Europe, which is still pretty much maybe 10% of travel maximum. So, you've got to manage now a global environment, but a very, very regional basis. So without that technology in place, I think, all of us would struggle within the industry. So from my perspective, certainly, the tools are in place to do some of this. But I think the complexity of actually what we, as an industry, are now dealing with has increased substantially, certainly, over the last 12 to 18 months.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah, no doubt about that. And I guess maybe, Florence, I'll turn this next one to you. As-

Florence Robert:

Yeah. Just before we moving on to the next question. Sorry, Kurt.

Kurt Knackstedt:

No, go for it.

Florence Robert:

What I found interesting when we're asking whether the technologies is actually taken part into the COVID, I would say it's starting to come, but it was not there. And as a result, I know that we basically blocked online booking tool pretty much everywhere because they were not able to cope to the level of security and checks that we needed to have in place. And I'm not the only travel manager who made that move. A lot of travel managers have actually switched off the online booking tool during the pandemic crisis and the top of it. As we were saying, China's traveling a lot, we have our online booking tool back in China, but we don't have it anywhere else.

And that's because it's not yet to the maturity of a market like China, where we're back to quasi normal, but for all the others, we still not have reactivated our online booking tool and travel agencies are starting to provide some tools like the advisory that Dionne was talking about and some. But it's still a work in progress. And as a result, everything has been moved back offline. So, we kind of took a slight setback for a lot of travel managers who were pushing for online adaption. And now I'm back to, "No, no, no, you have to go offline."

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:14:38] Well, that's interesting point, Florence, because then again, there's one part of the argument that says that the only way to then manage a complex situation is to make the channels simpler. You take away multiple channels online, offline, email, mobile, et cetera. And you just go offline back to calling an agent and getting advice is-

Florence Robert:

Yeah.

Kurt Knackstedt:

I mean, but that's obviously not sustainable post-pandemic, but ultimately is it that the simplification is to make the channels much more narrow at the moment. And are you seeing that there's benefit to that in the-

Florence Robert:

Yes.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah?

Florence Robert:

Yeah, because an online booking tool is able to book you a flight. It doesn't give you all the information with regards to PCR tests and so on. And right now the online booking tool have not integrated, for instance, the booking of a PCR test before you're leaving. So, all those information are still managed on our side by the travel agent offline. So as I said, the travel agency are starting to get forward with that, proposing PCR tests bookings, and that kind of things, but ideally it's more widely spread out. Yeah, the simplicity was to actually go back offline and to handle everything offline, unfortunately. Yeah.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Okay. Well, again, there's pros and cons to everything and that it's simpler for the traveler now to know where to go to book because it's just one channel. But again, if things start coming back to normal, the hard part is how do we keep that consistency of message as we go back to multiple channels? Paul, you mentioned this before, NDC is still out there. We're not going to cover that in this session, just to be clear.

Paul Dear:

Oh, no.

Kurt Knackstedt:

We don't want to go there, but again, content fragmentation has been a part of the industry for decades, but trying to use technology to simplify things for the travel at a time when the information stream is becoming ever more complex. Is there an argument to say that we should limit the number of technology options to travelers in the short term? Or do you think that technology is going to be still an enabler to help them do their jobs better and book travel and know better in the future more quick? I mean, how do you juggle those two priorities, I guess?

Paul Dear:

Sure.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Paul, I'll start with you and then, Dionne, I'll get your thoughts also great.

Paul Dear:

Yeah, great. I mean, ultimately, it's duty of care and I think that's really what we're focusing on here. And to give an example, we're seeing increased bookings going direct to airlines. Again, I think to possibly to Florence's point that there's a constraint through a specific channel at the moment. So we're seeing increase there. Concur has a product called TripLink works with the airlines, hotel chains, et cetera. It captures those bookings going outside of program. It's not a recommendation to do so, but we're catching them for the duty of care. And I think that's the ultimate issue here is how do you keep your travelers safe? We've touched on this previously regarding no traveler wants to put themselves in personal risk. No business travel manager would like to put their travelers at risk and no TMC or OBT would ever want to do that.

So, how do we keep them safe? Capturing every booking that you can find, bringing that into an environment that is managed, ensuring that obviously where you can get a pre-trip approval, the traveler has the knowledge that they need to make an informed decision before they travel. So, I think, yes, I can understand why some environments start reducing the number of channels of booking, but I still think you need to keep them fully open to be captured for data purposes, to ensure that the travel manager has a full picture of their solution. Because as I say, whether they're road travelers, whether it's allowed, there are bookings that are going outside of those recognized channels and always have been. And so I think it's important to capture that as well.

Kurt Knackstedt:

So it's duty of care, the main simplifier now? Because ultimately, Florence you mentioned this, but now it's not about the cost of trip. Travel management for the last 10 years since the GFC has all been about cost management and all those good things about keeping costs down while demand has shot through the roof. But now it's simply, are you safe enough to travel? Does that make it simple or, I mean, is that's going to be the benchmark going forward as long as it's safe to travel and there's a process to understand that? You'll get the tick in the box to go. Is that really the ultimate way to simplify the travel program? Is duty and care and that's the benchmark as long as the travelers looked at?

Florence Robert:

I don't think that's going to be a huge component. Yes.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah.

Florence Robert:

Duty of care has going to be one of the key marker components of any discussion or any change in travel policy that you're going to make. We're definitely, we've seen a shift even in telecom company like mine where we're always looking at the cost because that's how we are billing our clients to and so on. So, we've had to look at other options. We've had to look at bio-bubble where we, instead of just booking a hotel room where I'm booking a hotel room on a specific store with delivery for all the meals that are here at the door with no contact, that kind of information. So we had to change the way where just booking a simple routes before you would have gone on the online booking tool and booked your room. Here because it's a whole package, you need to go through the offline team who's going to then reach out to the hotel and negotiate some specific requirements and include all that into your hotel package in a way.

So yeah, I'm not saying that we're looking at it in the long term, we're actually looking at options that will help us to reopen all the channels because I agree with Paul. You're going to have people that are not doing it the right way anyway. So, you want to capture all that information and you want to make sure that they're as safe as possible, even if they're not done it the way we would like them to do. But we are going to reopen the channel when we are sure that we can offer the right level of duty of care for our travelers. And I think that's where the tricky line gray area is. When is that? When can you reopen channel where it's going to be safe enough at some other, yeah.

Paul Dear:

One last point just to add on top of that, Kurt, is just sustainability as well. I think we've all seen the impacts of sustainability and I don't think it's necessarily regional, I think, it's now more on a global environment. So I think duty of care absolutely is key, but sustainability alongside of that and understanding the need for travel, the impact for travel and how that then plays through into the sustainability side of things and see it through and everything else that goes alongside. I think they will probably end up being the two pillars that are sort of the strongest as we come out of COVID.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah. So I guess then the question in this group here, and, Dionne, I might start with you is, what strategies or tactics can travel managers and programs take in order to start deploying some of these ideas into the program? What are the things that we should be recommending people start to do if they're not already doing it to help simplify the program centered around duty of care as the primary objective for travelers and what are the things that people, if they're not already doing it, should be certainly thinking about?

Dionne Yuen:

Yeah, sure. So, basically, we always advise the travel managers during the COVID. I think, in the past, most people when they draft a travel policy, they may just look at the cost of the budget, the company's excess needs, but then starting from the COVID there's actually, like we advise more companies they should put more focus on their employees. But especially every employees, they may have different reason of concern, whether it will allow them to travel or not. So, first of all, we do highly encourage the travel managers to speak to their frequent travelers, and to understand what will be their new concern and then what will be their travel preferences in order to make sure they incorporate the employee needs to their new travel policy. And second, it will be also very important for the company to ensure that they will have a trusted source of information, so that they can continuously provide the most updated travel requirements and restrictions to the companies and to all the managers and to the travelers as well.

And then, actually, I would also like to go back to one interesting point that Florence shared earlier for her companies and also maybe for her acquaintance, they actually may prefer to go back to the offline booking process during the COVID, but we also have received different perspective from out of travel managers. And I think when it comes to technology for business travel, it may not be mutually exclusive. Technology can be another useful tool to perfect the manual booking process. Because no matter how advanced the technology that you apply to the OBT, we can never eliminate the human touch because it does provide a different possibility.

But how do we use the technology to perfect the manual booking process? For example, our agency, we have recently launched up a live chat box. The live chat box, actually, it won't just allow you to talk to like a virtual agent and to provide you the most relevant question, but it also let allow our travelers, no matter where they're based by using the mobile app, they will be able to speak to the live agent directly at 24 hours a day. So it can be a very good tool for you to cover any gap of a manual booking process.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Okay. No, that's great. That's a good use of technology there as well certainly. A bit of a blend of that personal touch, but with the technology interface that is relevant for the traveler and what they're trying to accomplish. And I think that's, again, the key thing that we're trying to get to part of this conversation is, is technology the panacea to simplify things? I think there's mixed views on that because sometimes technology can add to the burden of trying to make things too simple. The challenge of course is lots of different sources of information, lots of different channels. I think we're hearing that it's good to potentially minimize some channels in the short term while things are still very much in flux and then potentially add slowly over time. I think we've talked about that a little bit.

We've only got a few minutes left here though, which is unfortunate because we could probably talk about this for hours. And I guess maybe I'll go around to all three of you again, just for additional thoughts. When we go back to the idea of simplification, what do you see are the key elements to use the pandemic as an opportunity to simplify travel? What are the things again that you're already doing and what do you think if you're not doing it that travel managers should start doing in the very near future? Florence, I might start with you from the buyer perspective.

Florence Robert:

Yeah, I would say to me it's reuse exposure and that can be by avoiding travel in some cases that can be by providing better visibility in terms of, and I'm going to eco pull on that sustainability and on duty of care because that's the to-go layer of exposure that you're going to have, right? And so, that's the first things that a lot of people will be looking at is reusing exposure. How do we reuse exposure and then having a constant access and a level of support? What we are seeing with COVID is because of the uncertainty, for instance, booking in advance is something that nobody's caring at all.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah.

Florence Robert:

Where you're going to have booking at the last minute and you're going to have requests of us to support at the last minute, at the airport because there's something that's missing or anything. So yeah, a chat bot and alive bot is definitely something that we want to really explore and have that direct access to our travelers so that they can get the right level of support at all times whether that's from the travel agency or from the travel managers or from OHS and security. So yeah, we need to have this channel in place and we need to look at the level of exposure. That's the true aspect to me.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Okay, Dionne, get your thoughts. From a travel manager perspective, what would you do now if you're not already doing it to help simplify the travel program coming out of COVID?

Dionne Yuen:

Yeah, I think there are several elements would be very importantly how to come up with a simplified travel management. First of all, about the accuracy and the efficiency. For example, we actually have been helping those of our customers, how to optimize their business travel options, have to be compliant with the travel policy. For example, we have tools called the SmartMix. So, basically, the SmartMix tool is more like a machine learning technology that will help our customers to customize their travel policy by adding the best fare options. And then for the highest class, like [happy class 00:29:07] allowed or the budget, and then that will actually help in lots of our customers in order to complete an air booking with less than five minutes. Widely, 84% of the track flight booking will be shown in the top 10 search result in our tours.

So, basically, we will be providing efficiency will be very important. And then also talking about like accuracy, not just only we can provide different tools for the budget saving. And then I think more importantly, travel manager need to think of the importance of having a holistic view of the travel management especially when it comes to the COVID, if there is any disruption of travel caused by the COVID and then whether they will be able to access an immediate data, whether they will be immediately to track the travelers at the real time. And then it becomes a very late important expert that the travel managers should consider.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Excellent points. Thanks, Dionne. And then Paul, your thoughts again, what would be your recommendations for embracing this challenging time to come out with a simpler, more understandable travel program?

Paul Dear:

Yeah, well, I might just take a slightly different view that says, I think we need standards. I know we've touched on this before, but there needs to be an airline standard, there needs to be a hotel standard. And once there's those standards in place, a travel manager can manage that risk and manage that risk. But until that happens, then the complexity in the industry continues and it needs to be done almost on a country by country and almost trip by trip basis. Where they're going, where's traveler heading, what a vaccination is needed, what's the entry requirements and so on and so forth. So, technology today will be an absolute necessity and information gathering is an absolute necessity during the next sort of period of time.

But I guess the hope for the industry is that we end up with standards and those standards then applied by airlines, hotels, governments, entry requirements. And then we can get back to some sort of normality on managing it, managing your travel almost on a global basis. So, my hope is that we end up in that environment, but until then, it's just get as much information as possible using the right tools to inform the travelers and to ensure that the travelers are traveling for necessity because until that sort of we come through this COVID period, necessity is going to be the key reason for travel, obviously.

Kurt Knackstedt:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, they say necessity is the mother of invention and that's something that we're certainly embracing now. There's a lot of needed things to be done in the industry. So, but from a simplification perspective, again, some great perspectives from all of you. We talked about narrowing the channels in the short term to keep it simple for travelers, to know where to go to get information and support. We talked about ensuring that we had clarity around duty of care and sustainability as a primary method to keep it simple, say, "Look, make sure you're comfortable with traveling that you're healthy and safe when you're traveling and that you're doing it in a sustainable way." Use technology to the best of our abilities without getting overly dependent on technology. And again, to your point, Paul, if we can get to some standards that help keep it consistent in how we manage these processes coming out of the pandemic, that would be a great result for the industry.

So although simple and travel management isn't always used in the same sentence, we've done a pretty good job today to try to tackle it. So, my co-panelists, Florence, Dionne and Paul, thanks so much for your time and your perspectives. I hope that all of you watching from home and wherever you are have enjoyed this. I really appreciate you joining us today. And that wraps up our session. So, thanks so much for everyone for participating and for everyone for joining us around the world. And we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much guys. Appreciate it.

Dionne Yuen:

Thanks, Kurt. Thanks, everyone.

Paul Dear:

Thank you.

Florence Robert:

Thank you. Bye.

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