Overview

The client is a provider of property management services with an annual travel spend of £800,000. They were looking to move to a managed travel solution, and after a formal negotiation process, CTM was appointed to provide a one-stop shop for all online and offline travel bookings.

Objectives

Overall, the main objective was to implement a travel programme from scratch, that improved the booking experience and delivered a return on investment.

The key objectives were to:

• Drive compliance by introducing a travel policy
• Access full booking functionality for all types of travel
• Achieve complete visibility over bookings and spend.

Challenges

Having no existing travel management tools or processes in place, the client required company-wide training to be carried out for over 1,000 staff members. Given the small time window for implementation, the training had to be completed efficiently to allow for a seamless transition period.

Solutions

Online Booking Tool – Given the client’s requirement for advanced booking functionality, CTM implemented an OBT that allows them to book all aspects of their travel in one streamlined process – saving time previously spent searching on individual comparison websites.

Management reporting – with CTM’s comprehensive management reporting the client has a greater insight into the number and type of bookings that are being made. This not only makes things much easier for the invoicing but allows both parties to be more strategic when trying to further reduce travel costs by encouraging smarter buying behaviours such as switching to off-peak rail tickets.

Travel policy creation – Travel policies were embedded within Lightning, which triggers ‘guilt’ screens when the cheapest option isn’t selected for rail and air bookings. Hotel rate caps have been implemented for inside London and several other major cities, and Business and First-class options have been turned off for flights.

Training – CTM put together a Traveller Education Programme (that formed part of our implementation plan) to facilitate the onboarding of all travellers. Face-to-face booker engagement workshops on-site at the client’s head office were organised over a 4-day period. There were also ‘follow up sessions’ which were carried out via the web for anyone that wasn’t able to attend or for those that had any further questions.

Results

In just six weeks, CTM was able to fully implement a travel programme and policy from scratch, facilitating a seamless transition for the client and all internal stakeholders.

During the process, 1,025 travel bookers were loaded into the system with all existing negotiated hotel rates.

1st year savings = £44,905 (Rail = £36,746, Air =£8,159)

2nd year savings = £66,405 (Rail = £61,550, Air £4,855)

Online adoption increased by 13% to 98.82% in August 2019