BUYERS ARE RELAXING THE RULES ON ROGUE TRAVELLERS

I’m at the ITM Intelligence Conference in Manchester this week and, so far, it’s been a really interesting event with some fascinating insight into the future of business travel.

Yesterday’s recurring theme was traveller empowerment. I even wrote a blog post along these lines last week. With the rise and rise of social media and mobile technology, travellers are exposed to so much choice while on the move and are frequently making bookings independently. 

You would think this would have travel managers running for the hills. How on earth are they supposed to mandate travellers to stay within policy when travellers have essentially flipped them the bird and are all doing their own thing?

But you’d be wrong. Leading travel buyers are actually relaxing policy and, instead of stamping down on rogue travellers as they would have done previously, they are giving them price parameters and more freedom than ever.

Why? It’s all thanks to new technology, that’s why. Rogue travellers can now book through public apps and websites and managers have still have visibility of all of these bookings, thanks to a number of new products (Amadeus/KDS’ Maverick) that feed all of the information back to their corporate data banks. So rogue travellers can still feel rebellious and managers can still keep them within policy.

Posted by David Chapple, event director of the Business Travel Show. Challenge him on Twitter @btshowlondon