Travel managers play an often-misunderstood role in their organizations. They typically don’t book travel, but instead serve as both reactive firefighters and long-term strategists, ideally coordinating with various departments and earning face time with senior leaders.
Two seasoned practitioners joined the April Business Travel Executive Town Hall broadcast on LinkedIn to speak about their career journeys and what’s ahead for managed travel. Heather Allegrina, senior manager of global travel and expense at software company ServiceNow and Donna McGovern manager of US travel for ITV Studios America shared both the satisfaction and the struggle of juggling so many priorities.
“I started as any person in corporate travel starts, with a degree in philosophy,” Heather Allegrina quipped. “That has helped me tremendously with argumentation skills, logic skills, etc.”
Before joining ServiceNow five years ago, Allegrina had worked at an airline and several travel management companies, and said those experiences gave her the foundation for success on the buyer side.
Donna McGovern has managed travel at ITV Studios since 2020 after stints in hospitality and ground transportation sales. Before she first worked as a travel manager in 1999, after several years as a leisure travel agent, McGovern “didn’t even know corporate travel existed.” But she was immediately “hooked” because no two days are the same. “It just keeps moving,” she said, “and things come from all sides.”
That contributes to an under-appreciation of the role, the speakers said. Helping to determine an appropriate balance between cost savings and traveler experience, undertaking or supporting strategic sourcing, managing supplier relationships, writing policies, working on compliance and traveler engagement, reporting cost savings, understanding risk management and taking into account ESG priorities all can be part of the remit.
A given day may involve engaging with several departments. It may require responses to an airspace closure, geopolitical crisis or some other disruption. “Did I have evacuations on my roadmap? No, but we did it,” Allegrina said regarding the Middle East conflict.
“It’s time to change our title to travel orchestrator, with the tagline: We do not book tickets,” McGovern said. “You are orchestrating this beautiful symphony.”
“You need the tuba to come in when the tuba is supposed to come in,” Allegrina added. “When it doesn’t, the whole thing falls apart.”
Being Your Own Champion
Beyond the day-to-day tactics, the two travel managers stressed the need to carve out time to strategize and work on advancing the program.
“If I’m not making the time for strategy, I’m not meeting my goals,” Allegrina said. “Don’t allow yourself to get sucked into the weeds because when it comes time for review, and when it comes time to tell your leadership what happened with the program, you can’t say, ‘Well, I helped find somebody’s bag.’ That’s not what they’re going to want to hear. They’re going to want to hear: Where did you advance the program? Where did you build a relationship? How did you strengthen things?”
Providing solid answers to those questions means managing the many stakeholders with an interest in the travel program. The key, according to the buyers, is to be enterprising so the bridges are in place when you need them.
“You’re going to have to take a much more active role in promoting yourself, getting that awareness out there and showing the data on what your program is doing and why,” Allegrina said. “If you are not championing yourself and your department, nobody else will.”
McGovern agreed. She wants everyone to know what she’s working on and to keep the information flowing. For “rogue” production coordinators who book travel and have their own supplier relationships, that means showing the value of the program, notably greater savings potential and traveler tracking to fulfill the duty of care.
On the meetings side, Allegrina works with marketing and strategic sourcing teams. “My role is to enable the purchasing, enable the travel and enable people to get there to execute on that meeting,” she said. “I leverage my relationships or otherwise be a consultant.”
Success Metrics
How companies measure the success of the travel program itself depends on their structure and goals.
With a counterpart managing EMEA travel, McGovern works within human resources. That’s where travel sits because the company has many television productions that require crew movement, and the focus is on user experience.
Though saving money has recently become a higher priority, McGovern’s success is measured by feedback from the production management team. “I literally will ask at the end of productions, How did it go? What worked? What didn’t work? Did we help save them money throughout the show? Were we able to apply a lot of the unused tickets? Did they feel that they were taken care of?”
At ServiceNow, travel is in the finance organization. The focus is on policy compliance, program efficiency, self-service adoption, optimized air and hotel contracts and sustainability.
Allegrina’s team of four includes regional managers in EMEA and Asia/Pacific, and a North America operational lead. The questions they try to answer include: “Is our program easy to use? Are the tools that we bring in user-friendly? Are we creating a high self-service environment? Are we making our policy easy to find? How are the technology [providers] we’re partnering with and the programs that we craft helping support the overall ServiceNow goals? And then, of course, the gravy is, what’s the ROI on the program? Did the program save? How did it save?”
As a “sales enablement function,” she said, “we need to look at how are we supporting the business to go out and get business?”
Another question will be how the company adopts AI to make employee travel planning experiences easier.
For now, Allegrina is using AI in a few ways herself. She applied a tool to analyze the impact of the Iran conflict on airfares by route, ticket type and cost center. The result was an actionable one-pager that previously would have taken much longer to produce. “It’s gold,” she said.
She also mentioned AI’s potential role in employee communications. “You’re onboarded as an employee, you’re given the firehose of information, and you may not need it for months until you take your first trip,” she said. “Are you going to go back and refer to those onboarding materials?” Instead, new tech can help “meet the people where they are and deliver the messages to them when they need it, not just day one.”
McGovern has used AI tools for data analysis and to red-flag review detailed contractual clauses.
Voices of Experience
The two offered career advice for those starting in the industry. Ask lots of questions, build internal and external relationships and hone skills. Learn from peers by joining benchmarking groups and seeking out industry education and resources.
“Network relentlessly, even when you’re young,” Allegrina said. “You cannot put a price tag on it. Show up, introduce yourself and don’t be shy.”
For those already in the field, the pair suggested they shed old misconceptions, stay curious and seize opportunities to evolve into a trusted advisor. Accept AI’s growing presence and learn how to interact with it most effectively.
“We’ve got to go with the change,” McGovern said. “Whatever you resist persists. Be a constant student.”
Visit businesstravelexecutive.com to listen to this complete LinkedIn Audio session and find details about the next BTE Town Hall.
