How Travel Managers Are Getting Ready for a Return to the Road

Few employees are on the road, but travel managers have had a very busy year, says Elizabeth West, editorial director of the BTN Group. Even with minimal travel volume, it will take a lot of legwork to prepare companies for the safe return of business travel and meetings.

This week’s episode of Eventful: The Podcast for Meeting Professionals, features a recent conversation with West, who oversees the content for Northstar Travel Group’s corporate travel brands: Business Travel News and Travel Procurement.

Are travel policies changing? Will travel be optional? What are travel managers’ key concerns? Listen to the discussion here, and read highlights below.

In a general sense, what are travel managers experiencing right now?

A lack of travel. Very fundamentally, they’re looking at their programs and seeing five or fewer tickets go through in a week. I think it makes them question how much they can do at this time. 

But there is a lot going on behind the scenes with travel programs, too, as they prepare for the return to the office and the return to business travel. Many travel managers are working very hard on plans for a smooth return to travel, and understanding what suppliers need and what their travelers need in order to make business travel happen. 

Have some of the larger corporations decided there will be no travel through the end of this year?

I’m definitely not hearing no travel through 2020. It’s a dynamic situation, and we are looking for the right time to return, and building the on-ramps now to make that happen. I think many companies are following the cues of their employees in terms of their willingness to get back to the road.

Are companies concerned about liability if an employee gets sick as a result of traveling?  

Yes. In many travel programs there is infrastructure currently in place to address that. They may partner with an external risk-management company or have something in place with their security departments internally to educate travelers about the inherent risks in the markets they're going to. 

Will business travel be optional, assuming some people might not feel comfortable for a while?

Travel managers have been a little bit reticent to actually say exactly what's happening there in many cases. That is a human-resources issue. But I think they're being very sensitive and they're trying to be traveler-led in this situation. They're not necessarily being very open about that conversation right now. I think it's a very company-by-company decision, and what the travelers think matters a lot.

I think we need to consider the psychological effect of avoiding contact with people for so long. 

Yes, I think that's true. And I think it's unfortunate that we've had a politicization of wearing masks and doing minimal things that we can do to protect ourselves, our colleagues and our friends. I can hope people will take the steps needed to safely go on business trips and go to meetings. 

How are companies going to get back to traveling if a lot of their preferred properties aren’t open or aren’t providing full services?

The first thing to address here is inventory in booking tools. Employers will need to rely on their travel management companies to do some of that groundwork for the traveler. The idea of having a very good travel counselor may come very much back into play. We may not be as reliant on online-booking tools because we cannot necessarily check that every single hotel and every single hotel room that is inventoried in that booking tool is actually available.

There is going to be a big role for TMCs to take in confirming that hotel rooms are available, and that travelers don't show up to a property and find that it's not open or the services that they need aren’t available there. 

Those things are not communicated currently in most online booking tools. And because we can't have that information at the point of sale, at least in an-off-the shelf version of an online-booking tool, companies are going to need that information and need somebody to help them get it.

So, we’re back to high-touch travel management; will people actually have to make phone calls?

Not so many people are traveling right now, so maybe you can just give your travelers a checklist before they go on the trip, and number one on that checklist is to call the hotel you've booked and make sure it is actually open. But once you start to scale up and there's a volume of travelers, you will need to start to get partners involved.

We know that travel will be looked at differently for the foreseeable future. What changes do you expect on a corporate level?

For financial reasons, companies will be scrutinizing their business travel much more closely. The threshold will be quite a bit higher for the justification of travel — and that could last awhile. That curve is going to happen along with any recovery curve in the economy. Business travels certainly does follow the economic curve. 

I also think that pre-trip approval may last. We had seen a departure from pre-trip approval prior to COVID, with many companies saying it's really the decision of the business unit and the traveler whether to go on the trip. Now higher-level approvals are coming back.

Are corporate-sustainability goals a factor in decisions about business travel?

Companies may see a way to reach some sustainability goals with better demand management on the business travel side. That’s a factor that could take hold and might make business travel a little bit slower to recover to pre-COVID levels. They were at their highest levels ever prior to COVID. 

Will we ever get back to that record-high level of business travel?

I don't really want to make a prediction on that. I've heard lots of different estimations. A lot will depend on the health of the company and the health of the economy.

What are travel managers’ primary concerns right now?

One of the biggest concerns is the question of cleanliness and how to dynamically assess and react to that. Right now, we're getting lots of promises from hotel companies and airlines saying they are implementing all of these different protocols. But, especially with hotels, it really comes down to the individual property to execute on that. I think feedback from travelers will be very important. 

Also, I think that the availability of air and availability of hotels is going to be a little tricky. It may cause corporations to have to change their policies. For example, with limited connectivity, it might be that the lowest logical fare in an online-booking tool is not really the most logical anymore because of longer connection times. Efficiency is going to be quite paramount.

Will this crisis change the role of the travel manager going forward?

It has highlighted the profile of travel management as a strategic function within the organization. Travel managers should be taking advantage of that in every way that they can, because business travel and meetings are an integral part of the fabric of business. When supported and deployed in the right ways, they will support the business.