Many corporate travelers think the purpose of booking trips through their company’s corporate booking tool is to save them time. In that, they would be partially correct; however, there are many benefits of booking through your company’s corporate booking tool.
On average, it takes 5-10 minutes to book a trip with air, car, and hotel using a corporate booking tool. Compare that with the 30-60 minutes spent booking directly on supplier websites or leisure booking sites. When using these services, an employee has to move from site to site comparing pricing and schedules. Then consider the number of trips an employee/organization books over the course of the year. Once you multiply that by the employee’s hourly rate, you can see where things can get out of hand.
What are the other benefits of corporate booking tools?
Traveler Safety
Managing traveler safety is another important use of corporate booking tools. Booking tools can only operate when a travel management company provides air, car, and hotel inventory with the tool. By providing these, the travel management company has a traveler’s full trip data: flights, connections, car rental, and hotel nights.
If there’s a crisis anywhere around the world, the travel management company can quickly find out if any of that company’s travelers are in that area. They can then notify company stakeholders of the situation. When a traveler books a trip directly on a supplier’s site or with a leisure travel site and something happens to them, whether it be something minimal like a missed connection or something more serious like being in the midst of terror activity, they are unfortunately left to their own devices.
Data Collection
Corporate booking tools also collect data on the total amount your organization has spent with its suppliers. Your travel management company can use this data as leverage when negotiating on your behalf with your suppliers. It is much harder to negotiate the best possible rates with an airline, hotel, or car rental company when you don’t have your total spend data to leverage with your suppliers.
Whether booking through a corporate booking tool or with one of your travel management company’s corporate agents, your company will benefit from all of the points listed above. It’s what’s known as getting travel “on the grid.”