Travelmole has an great story today on travel agents and the dwindling trust in them from corporate clients. "Half of the UK's SME market has lost faith in the corporate travel industry and one in four FTSE 500 companies have turned their backs on traditional travel management companies."

The findings come from the UK Companies Business Travel Report, commissioned by online booking portal Hotel Reservation Service (HRS).

In the desire to control costs, many firms that appoint travel management companies (TMC) has apparently replaced one cost center with another. Bureaucracy has been replaced another version of the same thing. Rather than let the traveler shop around for the best deal, the traveler is forced into a channel – one that often is not price competitive. We heard from a person whose firm has a private label version of Expedia. A flight from SAN to LAS forced this traveler into selecting US Airways. Rather than pay the high fare, he opted out of the system and bought directly on Southwest Airline's website for much less. He had to break the rules to save his company money. How dumb is the travel policy?

Companies can easily change the need for TMCs by letting travelers use the web. Now how does one make this work? Using carrots. Incentive the traveler to do a search online and select the best price/time options. If the company's person in charge of travel approvals does not have a "feel" for pricing then they need to be moved into another job. Pricing is transparent and much more competitive when its forced into the open web as opposed to closed systems.

Using the old adage, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Companies need to allow their people use their brains and optimize travel planning. Guidelines for making travel arrangements make sense but forcing people into uncompetitive, canned, solutions is myopic. An example we saw recently is useful.

Using tools developed by Flightstats.com we were shown how decision support data can help a person make a smarter purchase decision. Their tool shows the various fare buckets on a city pair and then provides information about on time flight performance. A fare difference of $12 might be irrelevant when one sees the cheaper flight is 60% on time compared to the more pricey one being 90% on time. Since the employer only gets value from the employee when they are working, $12 is nothing to pay to ensure the employee is able to work.

Tools exist online today, for free, that empower smart people to make smart decisions. This can be accomplished with any more bureaucracy. People are mostly smart and the changes the travel industry has endured with the power of the Internet are testimony to human creativity. Free your employees of time wasting paperwork and brain constricting policies. Appealing to employees higher sense of intelligence will be of great benefit.

Travelmole has an great story today on travel agents and the dwindling trust in them from corporate clients. "Half of the UK's SME market has lost faith in the corporate travel industry and one in four FTSE 500 companies have turned their backs on traditional travel management companies."

The findings come from the UK Companies Business Travel Report, commissioned by online booking portal Hotel Reservation Service (HRS).

In the desire to control costs, many firms that appoint travel management companies (TMC) has apparently replaced one cost center with another. Bureaucracy has been replaced another version of the same thing. Rather than let the traveler shop around for the best deal, the traveler is forced into a channel – one that often is not price competitive. We heard from a person whose firm has a private label version of Expedia. A flight from SAN to LAS forced this traveler into selecting US Airways. Rather than pay the high fare, he opted out of the system and bought directly on Southwest Airline's website for much less. He had to break the rules to save his company money. How dumb is the travel policy?

Companies can easily change the need for TMCs by letting travelers use the web. Now how does one make this work? Using carrots. Incentive the traveler to do a search online and select the best price/time options. If the company's person in charge of travel approvals does not have a "feel" for pricing then they need to be moved into another job. Pricing is transparent and much more competitive when its forced into the open web as opposed to closed systems.

Using the old adage, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Companies need to allow their people use their brains and optimize travel planning. Guidelines for making travel arrangements make sense but forcing people into uncompetitive, canned, solutions is myopic. An example we saw recently is useful.

Using tools developed by Flightstats.com we were shown how decision support data can help a person make a smarter purchase decision. Their tool shows the various fare buckets on a city pair and then provides information about on time flight performance. A fare difference of $12 might be irrelevant when one sees the cheaper flight is 60% on time compared to the more pricey one being 90% on time. Since the employer only gets value from the employee when they are working, $12 is nothing to pay to ensure the employee is able to work.

Tools exist online today, for free, that empower smart people to make smart decisions. This can be accomplished with any more bureaucracy. People are mostly smart and the changes the travel industry has endured with the power of the Internet are testimony to human creativity. Free your employees of time wasting paperwork and brain constricting policies. Appealing to employees higher sense of intelligence will be of great benefit.