Why corporate travel managers care so much about compliance

The annual meeting of the National Business Travel Association (NBTA ) is held in Boston this week. It is the responsibility of these people for all business travel within their respective companies, negotiating airline, car rental, hotel and travel agency contracts, plus providing the means for business travellers within their companies to book travel.

With business travel as a major cost component for most corporations, managing expenditures has become a global, strategic effort. Many companies spend millions of dollars annually on business travel and any savings their travel manager can attain goes directly to the bottom line.

While all travellers’ safety is always important, on a daily basis corporate travel managers spend much of their time ensuring traveller compliance with corporate travel policies. Most large companies have negotiated discount rates with preferred airlines, car rental companies, and hotels, and encouraging travellers to book with these preferred suppliers can save a bundle.

Travel managers also cast adherence to corporate travel policy as a safety and security issue. If travellers use preferred travel suppliers and stay within policy guidelines they can be easily contacted in any sort of emergency. When employees book outside the corporate policy guidelines they may be more difficult to locate during a crisis situation.

One way corporations facilitate travel policy compliance is the use of a self-service online booking tool. Almost all major companies now book at least some portion of business travel online, and the percentage of corporate travel booked on the Web has grown steadily since the first online booking tools appeared more than a decade ago.