Getting Open Bookers On Side

Inside every company you’ll always find the kind of people who are determined to ‘do things their way’. While such a headstrong attitude is often an attractive quality in a senior manager, getting them to follow a company travel policy can be a challenge — particularly when they’ve got their own preferred ways and means, and choose to open book their own travel. But there is a way to get them to see the light. It’s all about demonstrating value.

Few outside of the travel game will understand what open booking is. For many, booking company travel is a similar to arranging their personal travel; they simply peruse a few websites to find a good hotel, flight, and car rental service. On their return, they report the expenses and other data relating to their trip to their travel manager — the exact person they should have come to in the first place!

The upshot is that those making their own arrangements risk compromising their entire trip (especially if they opt for an unmanaged booking). They might find themselves displaced by an overbooked hotel, or stuck in a fleapit motel on the wrong side of town miles from where they need to be. They could miss out on cost savings if the deal they book drops in price. Worse still, they may not get a full expense reimbursement; if their trip breaches company policy.

Things can get messy when travelers use open booking. Letting an individual book a hotel, no matter how experienced in travel, may not do so to their company’s standards. That’s why they have a travel manager. It also gives the traveler an additional responsibility—they must keep track of their travel expenses and other records of their trip.

While busy travel managers do everything they can to get the best deals at the best prices — such as monitoring availability — in a company with multiple travel schedules, it becomes almost impossible to keep on top of every single development.

Arbitrip has the solution to help travel managers control these unmanaged bookings in a way that allows for efficient and customizable searches, and presents a smart intuitive insight tool that lets a travel manager to keep track of all of these bookings through reports.

While tech alone is no match for expertise, travelers looking for demonstrable results will see the benefits of using a tool like Arbitrip very quickly. They’ll realize that spending smarter and getting a great travel experience means trusting their travel manager to make the right decisions.

Ultimately, travelers need to appreciate that there are tangible benefits to working with their company’s travel manager; and that doing so isn’t just paying lip service to corporate bureaucracy — it’s an exercise in quality control, budget management, and logistics coordination.

/by

Duty-Free Travel Just Won’t Fly

As a travel manager, you have a duty of care to your travelers, so you need to know where they are, where they’re staying, and what’s happening in whichever part of the world they’re traveling to. However, as more and more travelers start using online self booking tools — the kind they use for their own vacations — travel managers can quickly lose sight of who, what, when, and where.

For example, say a traveler books to go to a convention in Palm Springs via Expedia. The convention’s taking place at a specific hotel, so there’s only one viable accommodation option. But even if they choose a competitively priced package, until the expenses report’s filed (a few days after the convention…) the travel manager has no record of the booking.

This lack of oversight results in an absence of information, out of date reports, and often higher expenses. And should something bad happen — natural disaster, terror attack, civil unrest — how are you, the travel manager, going to make sure your colleagues make it home in one piece?

Ok, granted — this might sound overly paranoid. But from a professional standpoint travel managers need to feel satisfied that they can fulfill their ethical obligations, retain control over booking activity, and empower travelers — within the parameters of their company’s managed program.

Although an increasing number of companies are starting to offer better online and mobile tools, some platforms provide unmanaged bookings — made without an agent. And because deal-conscious travelers are prone to booking hotels on multiple channels through multiple providers, they often do so not realising that some offers aren’t connected to their company’s travel management system.

Ultimately, travelers want the same levels of convenience, freedom, and service they get from online leisure travel sites. And travel managers want transparency. Luckily the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

As well as helping businesses get the best possible hotel room prices, Arbitrip gives travel managers visibility of every single booking their travelers make — in real-time. This includes managed and unmanaged bookings, in-policy and out-of-policy bookings, on- and offline transactions, and even those made with or without an agent.

Keeping tabs on your travelers doesn’t mean scrutinizing every detail of every trip. But you need to make sure they stay safe, comfortable, and on budget — in that order. And while technology can give travel managers the insight they need, it’s not a cure-all. Establishing simple in-house procedures like regular communication, itinerary sharing, and pre-trip briefings can ensure everyone stays in the loop. After all, honesty is always the best policy.

/by