What do fare unbundling, new distribution channels, Gen Z/Millennial travellers and even British Airways¡¯ controversial frequent-flyer scheme changes have in common? The answer is that they all pose evolving challenges to travel managers fighting to keep their company travel policy fit for purpose.

¡°I don¡¯t envy travel managers now,¡± says Karen Hutchings, who left behind a distinguished career as one to launch Cobb & Hutch Consulting in January 2024. ¡°The fragmentation, the expectations of people, the tech that¡¯s out there... it all makes it more complicated. It will take a lot of influencing by the travel manager to fulfil the needs of the company as well as the needs of the traveller.¡±

Pressure on policy is being exerted by both external and internal sources, and often unexpectedly. Take BA¡¯s decision to make its Executive Club (now known as British Airways Club) members, as of 1 April, earn membership tier points based on spend, not distance flown ¨C the change left many travellers unhappy and travel managers with a new challenge on their hands.

Indeed, at a Business Travel Association/Advantage event in London earlier this year, travel managers were warned by Rob Burgess, founder and editor of loyalty programme website Head for Points, to watch out for travellers gaming the system. ¡°They will try to book late, or at peak times and generally to book the most expensive flight possible,¡± he said.

Meanwhile, ever more radical fare unbundling by airlines means new rules are needed around which ancillary items travellers are and aren't allowed to buy. ATPI global programme director Alwyn Burrage recently saw an example where even in long-haul business class an airline was charging ?94 each way for passengers to select their seats. ¡°Basic policies are not fit for modern retailing,¡± says Burrage. ¡°They don¡¯t have that level of flexibility.¡±

Internally, says Hutchings, ¡°being completely rules-based doesn¡¯t lend itself to the new kind of traveller coming into the workplace. Travellers are more vocal now. They ask the ¡®why¡¯ and it¡¯s not always easy to explain.¡±

Nowhere is that ¡®why¡¯ harder to justify than ordering travellers to follow rule number one in many policies: book through the appointed travel management company. As BTN¡¯s recent State of the Industry report underlined, the inability of some TMCs to offer and manage the cheapest fares that are readily available through airline.com and other websites is eroding trust in managed travel programmes. ¡°To tell somebody ¡®you¡¯ve still got to book through the travel agency¡¯ is a difficult sell now,¡± says Hutchings.

There are arguably even greater challenges to policy in the pipeline if airlines start to personalise their offers as they have long promised. That would take unbundling to new levels as different travellers are presented different packages of ancillary options. ¡°Static documents can¡¯t deal with that,¡± says Sarosh Waghmar, founder and chief product officer of travel technology platform Spotnana. ¡°Booking tools are not ready to deal with complex policy configuration either.¡±

Fortunately, while technology is driving some of the policy pains that companies are experiencing, it also promises to deliver some of the solutions. And, as Burrage, Hutchings and Waghmar all say, if travel managers can combine new tech with new thinking, they can reconcile those apparently conflicting needs of employer and employee.

Offer booking channel flexibility

Above all, travel managers can keep travellers happy by offering them as much flexibility as possible in what and how they book.

Perhaps the most radical embracing of flexibility would be to drop the mandate on booking through the TMC. Hutchings is one who believes that moment has now arrived. ¡°You should be able to collate data from people booking outside the agency because to explain to a very tech-savvy person that you¡¯ll lose track of them isn¡¯t an option any longer,¡± she says.

¡°Technology has advanced so much now that you should be able to capture that. If you want people still to book through the TMC when they have found a lower fare elsewhere you are going to have a lot of explaining to do,¡± adds Hutchings.

Examples of tech and tools intended to gather data from off-programme bookings include Traxo and SAP¡¯s Concur TripLink, and Hutchings also encourages travel managers to push preferred suppliers to provide reservation records sent to travellers who booked through their company¡¯s e-mail address.

Move to trip budgets

On frequently travelled city pairs, for which there is plenty of data to know the average price, ¡°give travellers budgets to build in flexibility,¡± says Burrage. He argues that allowing employees to make their own transport and accommodation choices not only makes them happier but also removes large chunks of expensive approval processes. This, he says, should extend to a built-in tolerance where sign-off is not needed even if the traveller slightly exceeds the budget. ¡°The cost of approval is potentially greater than the over-the-limit spend,¡± says Burrage.

Moving to trip budgets is not without challenges. One is that trip costs to the same destination vary, for example when the visit coincides with a major trade show. According to M¨¢rio Pires, head of digital travel experience for Nokia, technology is beginning to provide solutions. ¡°Artificial intelligence can detect that and set up a new temporary price threshold and even go into our tools and change the settings without us needing to have direct input so people can book within policy,¡± he says. ¡°These are easy things that AI can do.¡±

Spotnana's Waghmar agrees. ¡°This is something we are actively working on and will be going live soon,¡± he says.

Allowing travellers their own supplier choices also threatens the delivery of agreed volumes towards targets with preferred suppliers. Again, says Hutchings, new thinking is needed, this time about supplier relationships. Now, delivering traveller compliance is a responsibility for the supplier as well as the travel manager, both to communicate and to offer traveller inducements. ¡°It¡¯s moved on from thinking that a supplier agreement is just about price,¡± she says. ¡°What else do they bring, whether that¡¯s status match, bonus points or sustainability practices?¡±

Find your limits on flexibility

Even new technology and attitudes can take flexibility only so far. One example is remote working: allowing employees to work temporarily from another country. But speakers at the Institute of Travel Management conference in April indicated this practice is in retreat because of complications such as tax liability and exceeding the number of days UK citizens can spend in the European Union and vice versa.

¡°We are reviewing our policy and recommending we remove it [remote working],¡± said a travel manager at a financial services company. CIBT senior vice-president of client solutions Samantha McKnight added that ¡°companies are pulling back¡±, either by shortening the period allowed for remote working or eliminating it completely.

Use technology to make policy invisible

Given that employees are increasingly unlikely to read static company documents such as a travel policy, travel managers need to embed policy rules within employees¡¯ automated processes. Configuring booking tools to prioritise preferred suppliers is an obvious example, as is setting trip budgets as discussed above.

Another idea, which is beginning to move beyond the drawing board, is linking calendars to booking tools. ¡°If you enter a trip in the calendar, I automatically start pinging you with a proactive, personalised trip offer,¡± says Waghmar.

If the traveller fails to accept, the system can send reminders, including graphs showing the cost of travel rising closer to the departure date. Should, say, a BA Club member continue to delay booking, then a clear audit trail will show they had opportunities to book earlier and did not take them, at which point they can be invited to provide a reasonable explanation. ¡°Now we all know who¡¯s doing what,¡± says Waghmar.