Join Us at the Business Travel Show for Latest Travel Trends

How is the world of business travel changing and what trends are you spotting? It’s that time of year when we get the chance to discuss all the pressing issues of the industry at the Business Travel Show.

It’s being held this week, on 21 and 22 February at Olympia in London and we’re proud to be conference sponsors. We’ll be hosting three seminars and panel discussions on a range of topics including duty of care, travel management for SMBs and some of the powerful connections to partners that make the end-to-end T&E process even smoother for business.

You’ll find us at stand B550 where we’ll be on hand to answer your questions and offer advice on keeping up with the current trends in business travel.

Key topics to highlight

In a recent webinar, the Global Business Travel Association highlighted three key issues of the moment: the increasing consumerisation of business travel, a greater focus on duty of care and the use of technology.

It’s true that none of these trends are new, but developments in the way they’re seen mean it’s important for businesses to keep up if they don’t want to fall behind the curve. So how is your business responding to changes in these areas?

The increasing consumerisation of business travel

In the past, business travel was the preserve of senior management and bookings were handled by their secretaries. Those days are long gone. Employees at all levels are being asked to travel for work and it’s opened up a world of dilemmas for businesses.

As we saw in this blog, increasing numbers of employees are seeing the advantages of ‘bleisure’ travel – tacking a couple of days of holiday onto the start or end of business trip so they can explore the city they’ve travelled to. How does your business cope with these requests? Where do your liabilities start and end?

You might have your own corporate travel booking programme. You might have your preferred suppliers. But nearly half of employees prefer to book independently. How does your business handle these smoothly? What can you do to make sure the bookings comply with your travel policy?

A greater focus on duty of care

Our own research tells us that 77% of UK finance leaders aren’t confident their business could quickly and accurately locate business travellers in the event of an emergency. This means you are failing your legal duty of care obligations, of course.

But there are other factors to consider too.

GBTA research finds that:

• 79% of business travellers say their business travel experience impacts their overall job satisfaction.
• 59% indicate a company’s travel policy is an important factor when considering a potential employer.
• 84% say the quality of their business travel experience impacts their business results at least somewhat.

So how do you meet your legal duty of care requirements? And how do you balance employee wellbeing against the constant need to drive down costs?

Reaping the rewards of technology

When we surveyed finance leaders last year, 70% said their travel booking processes were not entirely efficient and 63% reported their employee expense processes could be improved.

Technology offers a way to improve the efficiency of the business travel experience. It can also help solve many of the dilemmas the new landscape brings.

You can let employees book anywhere but still get the insights, the savings and the compliance you need with tools such as Concur TripLink. You can protect your employees and meet your duty of care requirements with solutions such as Concur Locate. And you can drive down costs and aid compliance using technology to combine travel and expense, something data analytics leader Qlik found when it implemented Concur Travel and Concur Expense.

Are these solutions that could help your business improve its travel and expense processes?

Keen to find out more?

If any of these trends have resonated with you and you’re keen to find out how to respond to them, come talk to us at the Business Travel Show this week. You can book your free ticket here.