By Lesley O’Bryan, Senior Vice President
Changing traveler demographics have shaken things up, and digital transformation has led to most of the consumer journey – from awareness to advocacy – taking place online. For a mature business travel program to influence behavior, it must look beyond simply tightening policies. New solutions are needed, and at Advito, we are not just talking about what these solutions could be; we are defining them and making them tangible in ways that can benefit you now. To help drive travel program effectiveness, we’ve outlined four key questions that each travel manager needs to ask themselves when they are assessing their travel policy and how they are communicating with travelers:
-
Are your travelers informed, empowered and engaged?
Business travelers want to make good decisions on the road but are often unclear on expectations. If travelers aren’t aware of the corporate travel policy, how can they be compliant? By providing business travelers with relevant, targeted messaging—the right information, at the right time—you can give them the tools to increase productivity and satisfaction and to drive and even beat policy compliance.
-
Are you searching for incremental savings from your business travel program?
In most corporate environments, budgets are heavily scrutinized, and many managers are asked to do more with less. It’s no different for travel managers. Educating travelers before, during and after their trips can identify and reduce the hidden spend culprits that can add 10%–40% more cost to each trip.
-
Do your communications positively impact your travelers?
To educate and influence business travelers, it’s not just what you say—but also how and when you say it. To cut through the crowded landscape and avoid becoming “white noise,” you need to establish a balance of “push” and “pull” communications to make sure your key messaging resonates when it’s pushed to travelers and is easily accessible when they need it most. It is also important to measure the effectiveness of the campaign and focus our efforts on those that have the greatest impact on your travel program performance.
-
Do you have a communications strategy that leverages all available channels and aligns with defined goals?
To fully realize the potential of a traveler engagement strategy, you must have defined goals and clear metrics. From there, you can create key messages and deploy an omnichannel approach for maximum effectiveness.
Modern, effective travel programs require going beyond policy, and they require more than just a plan on paper. It is important to leverage the collaborative, shared technologies that your company has already invested in, and communicate with you travelers in a way that makes them want to do the right thing. By building targeted campaigns that drive both business travel savings initiatives and policy compliance, you can influence travelers to make the right decisions.
Advito’s Traveler Engagement team can introduce industry-leading practices and evaluate new approaches to advance your program, as well as examine hidden assets that might already be in place—yours and those of your TMC and other travel suppliers. It is important to define what works specifically for each team and culture, as no two travel programs are the same. We combine the expertise of our travel consultants with our communications and digital marketing experts. The result? A collaborative team of experts who apply a fresh approach to drive your travelers’ behavior and quickly affect change. Advito’s approach elevates the importance of the travel program to the company and empowers travelers to make good decisions.