Business travel (or indeed, most travel) today can be a stressful, tiresome experience. Incomprehensible booking systems, illogical security protocols and staff that believe passengers are an inconvenience are enough to make even the mild mannered despair. (more…)
Global spend for external meetings and events is estimated to be in the region of $200 billion a year (£128.4 billion), up to 4 per cent of the total global revenue for many professional service companies.
Over the last five years, most large organisations have been considering the effectiveness of their own external meetings spend. Nevertheless, while many of these organisations have engaged their procurement departments to develop policies and procedures to capture spend, they have failed to consider the true cost of running meetings. (more…)
Innovation wasn’t the official theme of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) convention held last month in the US. But its importance just dripped through constantly.
First, there’s the innovation in how we think about our consumers. One of the most interesting nuggets I heard came from Robert Stephens, the founder of IT support business Geek Squad. He used the term “patient and picky” to describe how the behaviour of travellers and consumers is evolving. (more…)
Recent high-profile data breaches including 100 million Sony Games users’ data being hacked and a pre-school fined for posting parent information publicly has highlighted the risk of inadequate data protection.
Customer data is precious, employee data too, yet how much rigour are brands applying to its protection? True event experts consider the risk of selecting certain destinations, carrying out health and safety and environmental assessments and compiling contingency plans, but are they missing the obvious? (more…)
During my career selling travel services I have encountered many ‘classic’ buyers. By that I mean very professional people who know exactly what they want and how to get it at the best rate. They are well practised in procedures and buying protocol and have a clear plan. This is good – but is it enough? (more…)
In the opening column to the autumn issue of the Supply Management business travel supplement, Rebecca Ellinor says a “do as I do” approach needs to be adopted.
At last – the Green report has appeared. Interesting that there was lots of coverage, interviews and so on from first thing this morning, but it wasn’t published till 3.30pm…I wonder why? Last-minute rewrites? And how come Robert Peston at the BBC got it hours before Supply Management did?
Anyway, it is a mixed bag. His six “clear reasons why government conducts its business so inefficiently” are excellent: accurate and inarguable. But at the risk of sounding jaded and/or arrogant (or maybe just very old), I can honestly say there is not a single procurement idea here that I have not read about in a previous report (Gershon, OEP etc); is already being implemented to my knowledge; or has been tried and failed. (more…)
This week is ‘work-wise week’ in the UK. Here’s the line up:
Monday was ‘smarter travel day’. This isn’t about wearing your best suit for the commute, but about changing the time at which you start your journey (more…)
The holiday season is here again. For some it may represent a well earned break. For others it ushers in a period of great anxiety. Is it possible to take a holiday and to feel genuinely excited and relaxed?
I read a horrifying article recently about “bleisure”, the concept of blending or extending business travel with leisure travel. All sounds fine, although in reality it is difficult to make this work if you are not single. (more…)
Talk about a fuss over nothing. The horror! Qantas, the Australian airline, reuses its plastic cutlery up to 30 times.
The company was dobbed in to the Australian Sunday Telegraph by a supplier visiting a catering centre, where staff said the cutlery was washed and reused an offensively high number of times. The supplier is quoted as saying: “I asked them, ‘If you have a leftover sandwich, do you put it with another half?’ They said no.” (more…)
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