One of the major objections you hear from business executives is: “why would we use a Travel Management Company when employees can just book travel through existing consumer online booking tools?” Well of course, much has been written about the many benefits that a Travel Management Company can offer, and the savings that they can deliver, so I decided to go in a different direction and conduct a small experiment.
The travel booking experiment
Basically, I wanted to see the time it took me to book the same round-trip (including air, hotel, and car) in a leading online consumer booking tool vs. a leading online corporate booking tool. I shopped for low to mid-range bookings but I decided to not follow any additional budget or travel policies.
The results
My findings? It took me an extra 5 minutes to book travel online than through a corporate booking tool.
Then I wondered the time it would take over a year. Let’s say an employee travels for business two times a month. That’s an extra 120 minutes, or two hours, a year spent booking travel online. In other words, if you’re a business owner with 100 employees, you stand to lose 200 hours annually just by booking travel through online sites.
Now, count in your employee’s prospect lunches, client dinners, and other superfluous activities. This seemingly simple task ultimately wastes your employee’s time and the company’s money. My experiment merely scratched the surface of unmanaged time due to travel booking. And as I mentioned, it didn’t account for additional budget constraints or travel policies. Travel management companies, like Christopherson Business Travel, allow employees to do they job they were hired to do. Let them get back to work while your travel management is in good hands.
