Travel
Why have corporate travel managers become so prone to inertia and averse to innovation in recent years? Why are numerous companies spending millions of dollars more on travel than necessary? Is it time for the travel manager’s job description to change?
I’ve been trying to find answers to these questions since I dedicated myself to travel education and training this summer, through my “On the Fly” Seminars and the Kralev International advisory services.
But it was a post by Scott Gillespie, who writes a blog on procurement and corporate travel management, that prompted me to air my thoughts in public. Although my arguments aren’t quite what he had in mind, I was happy to see that others share my concerns about corporate complacency.
Why do I feel qualified to pass judgment? Because I almost always pay the lowest coach fares, but I haven’t sat in coach since 2002 — and I’ve flown nearly 2 million miles and visited 38 states and 82 countries. And because this year, I’ve flown 100,000 revenue miles, for which I paid a grand total of $747. I’ve never admitted this publicly before, although friends have repeatedly urged me to use it as a selling point — I just didn’t think anyone would believe it. That’s why I’m writing a book, so I can explain it.
I’ve been shocked by how many companies still rely on large travel agencies without almost any meaningful supervision. I’m not suggesting that they stop using travel agents, because this may be the only way to handle high volume. The problem is that, in many cases, they are not getting the cheapest available tickets — but they don’t know it.
Why does that happen? One reason is that many travel agencies have lucrative contracts with certain airlines that encourage them to send more business their way. If your agency receives its biggest commission from American Airlines, it will likely book you on American even if United Airlines has a lower fare. Did the agency disclose any of this before you signed a contract?
The other reason is much less obvious, but hopefully this column will change that. While technology and automation are enormously useful and efficient, they discourage us from using our brains. Automation is no doubt vital for the travel-booking process, but the extent to which travel agents rely on computers to tell them what to do is stunning — and it costs your company a lot of money.
Let me give you an example. Last year, my former managing editor at the Washington Times had to go to Mongolia at a week’s notice and asked if I could find an affordable business-class fare. The cheapest ticket from Washington to Ulan Bator we could find — both from a travel agent and online booking engines — was about $8,700, which was out of the question.
So I started thinking outside the box and decided to try splitting the fare — if I could get a much lower business-class fare to a northeastern Asian city where one would connect on the way to Ulan Bator, I’d book the short haul in coach. Sure enough, I found a $3,250 business-class ticket to Beijing on Air Canada, and coach on to Ulan Bator on Air China for about $550. Both carriers are members of the global Star Alliance.
While any company most likely would have paid $8,700, I saved almost $5,000 — and it took me 15 minutes to do it. When was the last time your travel agent did that? I’m not suggesting that splitting the fare makes sense every time, but there are other creative — and legitimate — ways to save money that computers are not yet fully capable of mastering.
There are also things you can do to help your travel agency save you money. One of the services I offer is strategic travel planning. What does that mean? If you have more than one trip coming up, why not plan them at the same time? You don’t have to take them together — in fact, they can be months apart.
Several months ago, I had a client in Washington who wanted to go to Paris in the spring and to Buenos Aires in the fall. I knew that coach fares from Europe to South America are generally lower than fares from North America, so I suggested an unconventional way of booking two tickets simultaneously — one originating in Washington and the other one in Paris — and the savings exceeded $800. I won’t bore you with further details here, but send me a message if you’d like to know more.
How do you think most travel managers respond when I offer to train them and anyone in their company who might book travel directly? Some say their travel agency already takes care of all their needs and there is no reason to rock the boat. Others are unhappy with the travel agency, but they don’t have money to invest in learning how to save much more money. Yet others don’t seem to understand what exactly I can do for them.
Last week, a friend in Phoenix recommended my services to his company’s travel manager. The response was that, “due to budget cuts to travel budgets and their departmental budget, they felt that they could not justify the expenditure right now.” No comment.
In June, a business-development specialist from a Washington law firm took one of my seminars and saved $500 on her first ticket, so she recommended to the firm that I train their executive assistants who book travel for the attorneys. Management, however, saw things differently. “We have an agreement with American Express, so bringing you in would conflict,” they said.
I asked how exactly that would represent a conflict, since I wasn’t offering to book tickets for them, but I never received a response.
Nor did I hear back from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, having contacted Megan Costello, then-acting executive director, Kate Farrell, senior director for global education, and Amber Kelleher, director for global education, three months ago. I suppose they have better things to do than listen to new ideas that can actually benefit their members.
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Should the new United Airlines have international first class, like the old United, or not, like the old Continental Airlines? Most frequent fliers expect a decision in favor of one of the two models, but why not go with a mixed model? Why not keep first class on routes where it makes business sense, and fly two-cabin planes where it doesn’t?
Since the two carriers’ merger was announced in May, there have been many opinions in online travel forums advocating just coach and business class, but it’s hard to see the world’s largest airline without long-haul first class at all. Continental may call its premium cabin BusinessFirst, but it’s business class.
In addition, United has already installed new first- and business class seats on more than half of its wide-body fleet, and it makes little sense to now remove first class and expand business class.
Regardless of the mechanics, there are routes that can sustain first class and actually make money, especially now that business travel has recovered from the slump during the global recession. Wouldn’t it be a luxury for United to pick and choose the routes on which it operates three-cabin planes and even change them seasonally?
Many foreign airlines have flown both two- and three-cabin aircraft on long-haul international routes for years, including United partners in the global Star Alliance, such as Lufthansa, Thai Airways and Asiana Airlines. In fact, Asiana currently flies one two-cabin and one three-cabin plane daily between Seoul and Los Angeles. In the Oneworld alliance, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas use a mixed model.
If you look at the loads in both first and business class on all those carriers, you will discover that they are selling extremely well — many flights in the next few weeks are actually sold out. As I reported last year, the recession forced some airlines to cut back on first-class service temporarily, but things now are very different.
So let’s not count United’s first class out quite yet.
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As U.S. and other NATO troops continue to die in Afghanistan, one of the main questions being asked in foreign policy circles is this: How committed are Arab governments to defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban? The United Arab Emirates showed last week that fighting violent extremism is less important than its commercial airlines’ well-being.
Most governments around the world help their carriers in various ways, not only out of national pride, but because a strong airline has a positive impact on a country’s economy. One of the missions of every U.S. embassy is to promote trade and commerce that benefit American companies. That has become an organic part of modern diplomacy.
The UAE, however, has gone farther than most countries do by kicking Canada out of Camp Mirage, a military base used to support operations in Afghanistan. Why? Because Ottawa refused to succumb to the tremendous pressure Abu Dhabi applied in the last several months to secure a significant expansion of flights to Canada for the UAE’s two largest airlines, Emirates and Etihad.
By doing so, the UAE has not only shown that its carriers’ profitability is more important than maintaining good foreign relations — it also risks harming the security of NATO members, and in fact regional and global stability.
The UAE’s ambassador to Canada, Mohammed Abdullah Al-Ghafli, expressed frustration with Canada’s rejection of his government’s demands, saying that “will only negatively impact the populations and economies of both countries.” His prediction may be correct, and some Canadians no doubt share it. Among them is Calgary Mayor David Bronconnier, who said in February that “airlines such as Emirates have an enormous ability to add to our economic vibrancy, business and tourism activity.”
Both Emirates and Etihad have an excellent reputation, and many travelers are happy about their success and wish them no ill. Their well-being is actually good for consumers, because it boosts competition and pushes other carriers to improve. Their competitors, on the other hand, feel differently, accusing Emirates and Etihad of receiving unfair assistance from the UAE government.
However one feels about the two carriers’ growth, holding defense and security hostage to commercial aviation is questionable at best.
The UAE sought to increase the current three flights a week to Toronto by both Emirates and Etihad to daily, and to add flights to Calgary and Vancouver. Air Canada naturally objected, though other airlines would have been affected, too. Many passengers traveling from the Middle East and South Asia to North America now fly first to Europe on Air Canada’s Star Alliance partners Lufthansa, Swiss International Airlines, Britain’s BMI and Austrian Airlines, and some of them connect to Air Canada.
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Are you one of those travelers who wait until they get to the airport to find out that their flight has been delayed or canceled? It’s time to become a proactive flier and learn how to predict disruptions, so you can get rebooked before anyone else on your flight, with a minimum impact on your travel plans.
Although there is no guarantee that your prediction success rate will be 100 percent, because airlines often swap aircraft, the method I’ve adopted works most of the time. It’s actually rather simple: I track the planes assigned to my flights by matching arrival and departure gates. Continental Airlines makes it even easier by providing the most advanced data in the industry, but more on that later.
The aircraft for a United Airlines flight I recently took from Washington to San Francisco came from Sao Paulo. Had the flight from Brazil been late, I would have known hours in advance, which would have allowed me to get rebooked on the phone before even leaving home.
You might ask why you need to waste time tracking planes and matching gates, when airlines usually send e-mail and phone alerts in case of delays and cancellations. I find that I’m usually ahead of them, because for some reason their systems often take hours to update.
If I see that United 952 from Washington to Frankfurt is four hours late, I know immediately that the return flight 953 will be delayed, too. But I’ve seen United take hours to reflect that in its system, perhaps hoping that the plane will make time in the air. That can be a valid reason to wait for a final determination, as can be the possibility that another aircraft may be found to replace the delayed one.
So why am I so sure Flight 953 won’t depart on time if Flight 952 is four hours late? There is only one Boeing 767 flying to Frankfurt daily, and it operates both 952 and 953, which leaves no room for aircraft substitution. In addition, the turnaround time for that plane on the ground in Frankfurt is less than two hours, so there is no way the plane will leave Frankfurt on time after arriving from Washington four hours late.
Knowing the type of aircraft assigned to your flight would make the gate-matching exercise much faster, especially at a hub like Washington Dulles or Chicago. To make it even easier, you can use your departing airport’s website, which will display all arriving flights in a certain time frame with their gates on the same page. If you know your flight leaves from Gate 72 in Los Angeles, save yourself time by going to the LAX website, rather than the United site.
Most planes, of course, operate several flights a day, so if I have time, I track my planes since their first voyage in the morning. Yesterday, for example, the Boeing 767 I flew on from LA to Chicago had started the day in LA, flown to Denver and Chicago before returning to LA to pick me up. By the way, the tail number of that plane was N666UA.
What about aircraft replacement? That’s another reason to do your homework. That flight from Washington to San Francisco I mentioned earlier was scheduled to be operated on a Boeing 767 — with a domestic seat configuration, which means two cabins and those utterly unimpressive domestic first-class seats. As soon as I learned my plane was coming from Sao Paulo, I knew there had been a swap to an internationally configured, three-cabin Boeing 777, so I’d sit in a much more comfortable business-class seat. Since the substitution changed seat assignments, I quickly logged in and grabbed my favorite seat in the business cabin.
All major U.S. carriers’ websites show gate information, but Continental beats them all to the punch by displaying much more valuable data — it actually shows the tail number of the specific aircraft assigned to your flight and tells you where it’s coming from, including the inbound flight’s number. For instance, you are flying from Newark to Berlin on Flight 96 today, your Boeing 767′s tail number is N158CO, and it’s coming from Zurich as Flight 79. Right next to that information on the Continental site is a link to the real-time status of that flight.
Continental goes even further, offering descriptions of beverage and meal services for that particular flight, as well as data on in-seat power, entertainment, aircraft features and seat configuration.
This is a great example of a customer-friendly policy, which the merged United should adopt on its website. In fact, all airlines should provide that information — it would certainly make our lives much easier.
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Are you tired of logging in to dozens of accounts for your airline, hotel and rental car loyalty programs? It was high time a website came along that displayed all those balances on one page, so you can see quickly when your miles expire or how many more hotel points you’ve earned since your last log-in.
Last year, I received an e-mail message from one of the founders of AwardWallet.com, suggesting I write a column about the new site. I wanted to wait until I’d tried it, and that took a while, but now that it’s been a few months since I signed up, I’m glad it came along.
The site supports hundreds of programs, including schemes for credit cards, dining and shopping, such as OpenTable, iDine and CVS’ ExtraCare, and it’s constantly adding new ones. All you need to do is provide the user name and password for each of your accounts, and the next time you log in, all your balances will be displayed on the same page.
Another page shows your upcoming trips — but you don’t need to do anything extra to create those trips. Because your AwardWallet account is already linked to all your airline and hotel programs, as soon as you book a plane ticket or make a hotel reservation, it’s automatically added to AwardWallet. The site also e-mails reminders to check in for your upcoming flight online.
There are some little quirks that can be a bit annoying, but they seem to be beyond AwardWallet’s control. For example, when a schedule change occurs for a booked itinerary and the ticket is reissued, the site creates a completely new trip but doesn’t delete the old one.
Still, the service the site provides for free is unique, useful and will make your life quite a bit easier.
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