Compliance a major issue in corporate travel management

Travel management company, BCD Travel, has released its 2008 Travel Program Survey, revealing a 23 per cent increase in companies whose corporate travel policy enforcement is either “strict” or “moderate to strict”, compared to 2007.

The corporate travel management report showed that 59 per cent of respondents were proactively seeking to increase corporate travel compliance in their organizations compared to 36 per cent in 2007.

During tough economic times, corporate travel clients are appreciating even more the quality and value of advice provided by travel management companies such as BCD Travel.

Among the measures being taken is increased usage of online booking tools to reduce corporate travel processing costs and setting tighter parameters regarding preferred suppliers. Companies can customize their individual policies using BCD Travel’s online booking system. With the click of a button, BCD Travel’s business travel management clients can change their company rules any time they like.

BCD Corporate Travel Event Management

Whether you want to control annual meeting spend – leverage your meetings volume to gain efficiencies – increase sales or market share through incentives – recognize your employees – or improve your employee and customer communications, BCD Corporate Travel Event Management can help. The event management team in BCD corporate travel Australia combines the experience and expertise of our staff to achieve an unparalleled depth of service and talent across the meetings and incentives industry. This in turn makes us well positioned to meet the demands of a growing global business environment.

The event management team in BCD corporate travel has a wealth of experience in understanding and meeting the needs of a variety of corporate clients. Our people are key in our success. In all their dealings they are uncompromising in their focus on our clients – we seek to establish a mutual commercial relationship that meets your travel, conference, meetings and incentive needs. We back up the strengths of our people with technology that allows us to work faster and smarter.

Stay tuned for more Business Travel updates from BCD Express.

BCD Corporate Travel Recommends Hanoi

Vietnam’s thousand-year-old capital is one of the most beguiling cities in Southeast Asia – a stylish, European-influenced metropolis with manicured lakeside promenades, tree-lined boulevards, ancient pagodas and French-colonial buildings painted in a peeling palette of jade, turquoise and burgundy.

Following years of rampant inflation, poverty and repression, the government introduced economic reform (doi moi) in 1986, allowing people to own their own businesses. Nearly sixty percent of the population in Vietnam was born after the war ended in 1975, and Hanoi feels like a city of teenagers.

More information at BCD Corporate Travel.

Confidence with corporate travel

Corporate travel management agency, BCD Travel, is acutely aware of how the global financial crisis is impacting its corporate travel clients and is ideally placed to provide guidance and support with corporate travel programs, internal policies and compliance measures to assist clients in reducing costs.

With 30 years’ experience locally, this travel management company has seen rough economic times before and has greatly assisted their corporate travel clients in the past with these circumstances. 

Read more at BCD Corporate Travel.

About BCD Corporate Travel

BCD Corporate Travel is your all inclusive corporate travel agency offering competitive ongoing corporate travel management solutions to companies across Australia. We do more than simply organise your corporate travel, we also coordinate conferences and incentives and assist staff with personal holiday planning to any destination worldwide.

Part of the BCD Global Network, BCD Corporate Travel Australia has access to a huge network of domestic and international suppliers, enabling us to source the best fares and rates available and negotiate exclusive deals for our corporate travel clients. Our state-of-the-art online travel booking tools make it all so easy.       

A unique balance of local focus with global opportunity is how we meet this challenge.

Our unified BCD Travel global network, leveraged by one of the most experienced travel teams in Australia, provides each client with an accurate view of where and how their resources are being spent. With integrated global technology and financial management systems, we are able to meet each client’s particular needs with expert understanding.

Reducing costs of corporate travel

Corporate travel clients across Australia are increasing concerned with reducing corporate travel costs in light of the global financial crisis and anticipated slow down in the Australian economy, according to corporate travel management company, BCD Travel.

In its 2008 Travel Program Survey, 97 per cent of respondents cited reducing corporate travel costs as a major priority for the coming 12 months.

In line with this, BCD Corporate Travel, which has offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, has noted a significant decline in bookings for overseas corporate travel over the past few months, as local companies become more frugal and the Australian dollar continues its decline against the greenback.

Corporate travel management clients are also tightening their policies on the frequency and type of corporate travel allowed in their organizations, with options such as business class now strictly reserved for longer haul corporate travel flights.

BCD Travel offers significant flexibility and customization with its online corporate travel management programs, allowing clients to change their corporate travel rules with the click of a button. Comprehensive reporting functions also enable managers to quickly identify their organisation’s corporate travel habits and take measures to change them through compliance and communication.

Building The Perfect M.I.C.E Trap

Improved expertise and technology are enabling organizations to capture and deal with their meetings expenditure more effectively than ever before.

An estimated $325 billion is spent annually on corporate meetings, incentives, conventions and events (MICE), of which the US and Europe account for roughly $120 billion each.

MICE usually represents 25-40 percent of a company’s total travel spend and yet, says BCD Meetings & Incentives president Scott Graf, nearly 70 percent of global companies cannot or do not accurately identify their meetings spend, mainly because they fail to track as many as four out of five events that they organize.

Both the size of the meetings market and the difficulty of measuring and managing it explain why Graf describes MICE as the last frontier of travel management. Graf believes that is changing fast, if only because of a growing appreciation of how important an area of spend this is. According to Graf, meetings are more important then ever based on the rapid evolution of telecommuting and more of a global world. It is critically important for leaders and managers to get together to personally interact with employees, customers and supply partners.

Fortunately, buyers are understanding not only how much of a problem MICE spend is but also that there are solutions available to them. One part of the solution is to apply the same strategic management processes that they have already used successfully for managing transient travel spend. This includes using professionals such as BCD Meetings & Incentives which have grown a significant base of expertise in MICE to match their knowledge in corporate travel. Clients are telling us: "I’ve seen you control our transient travel; please repeat the same for our meetings spend", says Graf. BCD Travel’s meetings subsidiary, BCD Meetings & Incentives, now has 350 employees and operates in nearly 30 countries.

The other resource available to MICE managers is technology. Tools have appeared on the market that help buyers and meeting planners to organize every step of an event and monitor overall expenditure. One such provider is StarCite, BCD Meetings & Incentives strategic technology partner.

When organizing a meeting, an online tool can help with the following tasks:

Plan plot scope of meeting and gain approval

Budget build budget and manage expenditure

Buy build, conduct and review RFPs

Attend create registration site to market the event and manage bookings for the event itself as well as travel, accommodation and entertainment

Measure includes expenditure reports, benchmarks and return on investment calculator

Using technology of this kind can help push companies towards significant savings, says Graf. In the case of businesses which have never previously attempted to manage their MICE spend, this could easily amount to a cost reduction in the order of 18 percent. It often proves to be the case that unmanaged companies have not previously even negotiated attractive group rates and consistent terms and conditions with hotels. Graf describes tackling accommodation as well as food and beverage as easy pickings but also substantial ones because they often represent more than three-quarters of the cost of an event, if air fares are not included.

With savings as substantial as these possible, many more companies can be expected to join the trend for capturing the MICE in their organizations.

Find out more about this story as well as other corporate travel management solutions at our website.