“Having access to good data and analytics is critical to managing a successful travel program,” says Bob Brindley, senior vice president-global supplier engagement for Partnership Travel Consulting. “Access to key data and analytics not only allows you to measure performance to identify areas of risk and opportunity, but facilitates informed decision-making to optimize the program.”
At the same time, there’s a considerable difference between simply providing data and providing meaningful data, according to Julian Russell, executive director, information technology and supplier relations, GlobalStar Travel Management. "The former has the potential to hinder the ability for travel executives to manage their program effectively, while the latter provides insights and ideas to drive change," he says. A key is making sure that data are backed up by the support of a strategic account manager who’s able to analyze and interpret the data based on their understanding of the corporate travel space and the perspectives of other travel programs they’re familiar with.
Along with its underpinning of good decision-making, relevant data provides important connection points with others. "I think sometimes it’s hard for other parts of an organization to fully understand the scope of what falls under a managed travel program," says Hansini Sharma, practice lead, corporate travel at Acquis Consulting Group. "Telling the story of a program through data enables travel executives to speak the same language as other parts of an organization, and also find ways to leverage the insights gained from travel data to influence decision making across the firm."
Not to be overlooked, certainly, is the importance of information that supports safety and risk avoidance. “Data is paramount to corporate travel duty of care policies and services,” says Steve Solomon, chief commercial officer at ARC. “Being able to capture traveler data, including flight itineraries and other travel accommodations, gives program managers the necessary information to provide support and mitigate risks.”
The Search for Meaning
A key to meaningful analytics is having access to consolidated sets of data from multiple sources, notes John Trigg, senior director intelligence and analytics, Advito. “Digging deep on agency-only data or diving into your credit card or rental car reporting is only going to show you one perspective of activity,” he says. Combining data sets such as those from your agency, expense, HR hierarchy, rental car, ride share, and meetings and events provides views of real opportunities for driving change within a travel program. “The upfront work to get all of these sources singing in harmony takes a bit of effort,” he notes. “But once you have the matching algorithms in place, you’ll see everything in a whole new light.”
Brindley says that to achieve high performance, data analysis should include overall spend, volume (air segments or tickets, hotel nights) and price trends (average ticket price, ADR). He also points to savings metrics such as discount rates and contract savings as a top priority, along with other important elements including program compliance, traveler satisfaction and preferred supplier programs.
Beyond just looking at the sources of data, the quality of the data coming from those sources – accuracy, timeliness and depth of data – are critical to meaningful analysis.
“Data and analytics provide a view to what is happening to the business,” says Michael Duffy, head of product at Grasp Technologies. “The more quality data that you have, the more granular and fine tuned your decisions can be. Without good data, how could one be confident in decisions being made?”
Russell notes that in looking at policy compliance, it's important to determine if travelers are booking within company policy and if not, to identify the reasons why and also pinpoint associated missed savings. With airline contract rates and advance purchases, are corporate airline rates being booked to benefit from the agreed corporate airline deals, and are travelers booking eight or more days in advance? And for hotel contract rates, analysis should include whether corporate hotel rates are being booked to drive business to corporate hotels to benefit from negotiated hotel deals.
Ken Lawshe, VP of enterprise sales for Navan, says that for those looking to optimize traveler productivity, mobile adoption and time-to-book are key measures. And for companies focusing on cost reduction, factors such as price parity as compared to consumer channels, NDC adoption rate, out-of-policy spend and peer benchmarking are critical concerns. “Of course, none of these data points are available for travel booked off-platform,” he says. “So isolating and addressing the reasons for off-platform spend is an important starting point.”
Environmental impact is another area worth examining. “When optimizing for sustainability, many are closely tracking their carbon emissions data,” Lawshe says. “This can get as granular as point-to-point flight routes where there is a viable rail alternative.”
In some cases, plans for data analysis may seem simple but actually pose challenges. Sharma points to total-cost-of-trip as an example. "This is actually a really difficult metric to track but an important one," she says. "Sometimes people choose to book a flight from a further airport because it’s a few dollars cheaper, but then the cost of transportation increase is actually more than the savings on the flight. A complete picture of how much a full trip costs will include areas such as airport choice, hotel and ground transportation."
Impact of NDC
As if other challenges aren’t enough, NDC presents a whole new wrinkle in travel data management, notes Greeley Koch, managing director of 490 Consulting. “NDC content may flow through a travel management company directly from an airline or via a third party,” he says. This complicates the process of maintaining clean and organized data since there can be multiple sources of business travel data, unlike the previous model where it primarily flowed through a single TMC.
If NDC is being utilized through non-traditional channels, travel managers will need to establish a new data collection process, according to Koch. This could introduce additional costs and complexity to data collection efforts, affecting the ability to respond to data analytics requests from the company's senior leadership. “These unusual business times have brought about unique challenges in data collection and analytics,” he says.
“An airline booking made through EDIFACT, as an example, isn’t capable to have the rich structured data that newer platforms provide,” Duffy cautions. “Those changes in the supplier distribution don’t necessarily have to translate to complexity but it does require new tools to harvest that new data. So, for a travel executive, that could mean acquiring TMC back office, GDS, NDC, expense, and payment data.”
Indeed, the evolution of NDC could lead to a whole new set of reports, Lawshe says. “We’ve seen the rise of NDC wreak havoc on traditional EDIFACT-dependent programs as travelers increasingly find price discrepancies and missing content when comparing directly with airlines,” he says. At Navan, internal data finds price discrepancies as much as 12 to 35 percent, depending on the airline. “Cost-conscious travel managers find themselves in a bind,” he adds. “Either allow off-platform bookings to save money, or mandate compliance and inflate costs in the process.”
Currently at Navan, more than half of bookings across respective markets are already flowing through NDC on eight major airlines, with more than 20 percent of bookings on many more. “This helps drive traveler confidence in the program and reduces noise for those administering the program,” Lawshe says. “Regardless, NDC is a huge savings opportunity that travel administrators and finance managers will increasingly want visibility into.”
Smart Usage
What worked once in the world of data may not be enough today, according to Lawshe. He says too many travel and procurement leaders are still relying on spreadsheets sent over by their TMC’s account managers well after each month has ended, and then having to search for insights. Others get their TMC’s booking connected to their own internal dashboards but still struggle to consolidate reporting across different sources and adapt these dashboards as priorities change or new questions arise.
“The best way to have as much visibility and control of your travel spend and other expenses is to implement a modern, all-in-one T&E management platform,” he says. He notes that with real-time visibility, companies are able to track every dollar spent in real time. From there, leaders are able to make data-driven decisions regarding their travel spend to reduce leakage, improve forecasting and optimize expense policies. “Data fluency is a core expectation from the C-Suite in 2023, and travel has room to catch up to other critical spend categories.”
In the process, taking advantage of ongoing tech advances can pay off. “Historically, sorting through data and sharing an analysis can take data analysts days or even weeks – but it doesn’t have to,” Lawshe says. He points out that generative AI and other technologies have made it possible for decision-makers to access data and analyses that, within seconds, pinpoint opportunities for savings across the T&E program.
“There are some new travel data companies using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to transform the way we look at data,” Sharma says. Such solutions have found a way to take multiple formats and sources of data from TMCs, expense management software, corporate card and more, and cleanse, normalize and report on it. “If a firm is able to work with a travel data solution, not only will it save them time, it will also provide richer, cleaner and actionable insightful outputs.”
However, this is where the data quality becomes more crucial, Duffy says. “Conclusions drawn from those analytics would still be vulnerable to poor data, but experienced people with travel data will often recognize and question when results do not make sense. AI at this point in its evolution, may not know if its conclusions make sense. The optimal combination is to have a foundation of quality, clean data along with analytics and experienced people working with AI to provide insights.”
Along the way, gaining full value from data analysis requires good communication, Solomon emphasizes. “Travel executives should work with partners that make it easy to aggregate different types of data and enable them to access and analyze the data in an efficient way,” he says. “When dealing with suppliers, travel buyers should understand the parameters in which the data was queried so results can be compared with current reports to ensure they’re within a reasonable tolerance with acceptable differences.”
Russell advises considering the end traveler and booker with personalized data. "The focus on data, dashboards and analytics is always on the travel manager, but recent trends have seen the push of personalized data directly to the traveler to allow them to make informed decisions and be aware of the impact of their behavior," he says. While there is naturally a cost to delivering such capabilities, in many cases that is countered by the savings achieved through this visibility.
"The most important thing is that analytics and goals need to be tailored to, and in sync with, your strategies and objectives," Brindley notes. "From there, the focus is on data sources and collection." He adds that for analytics, it's important to drill into the data to provide context to the high-level performance metric. For example, if average ticket prices are increasing, is that due to higher prices, a shift in market mix to higher fare markets, a change in booking patterns (advance purchase window), lower use of preferred suppliers, or is it due to a higher volume of premium seats?
"You really need to peel back the onion to determine what's driving the target variance," Brindley concludes.
