Travel Market Size

Overview

Innovations in corporate travel technology reflect macro business and technology trends. Whether it is the need to consolidate global data, travel market size, expand purchasing control over a wider variety of services or simplify the booking and expense process, the common theme is greater control and an improved user experience.

Global consolidation of travel expenses has been a recurrent theme for many years.

There are a variety of methods to consolidate travel, including a common payment method (e.g., charge card), a single global Travel Management Company (TMC) and/or a preferred global self-booking platform. Each of these approaches has merit, but the difficulty in successfully implementing these strategies should not be underestimated. The key drivers for global consolidation are information management and policy execution. To build a successful global travel market size management program, travel buyers need to leverage as much volume as possible to achieve corporate discounts.

Travel Market Size

In fact, implementing programs that overcome supplier hurdles is at the heart of effective global travel management. This may sound like a simple task, but in reality, consistently interpreting and executing global contracts continues to be a challenge for travel buyers. The first step in global consolidation is the collection of travel management data from all offices. However, volume at some international locations may be relatively low compared to corporate offices. As a result, gaining cooperation from the local TMC, or even branch offices of mega-TMCs or consortiums, can be problematic.

Horizontal Integration

Procurement is playing an increasing role in travel management. As a result, many buyers are expanding the types of services managed under the corporate travel umbrella. To meet the needs of more potential customers, vendors are including more travel-related activities, such as meetings management, parking and restaurant reservations in their applications.

Large corporate meetings and incentive travel have been managed effectively through existing technologies, but capturing and controlling small meeting expenses has been challenging as most meeting planning is done by executive administrators and internal meeting planners. There is no common tool to manage these processes internally. The introduction of meetings management modules is alleviating the problem, making site selection easier, integrating bookings into existing online travel applications and controlling all travel market size-related expenses associated with the meeting.