Cut costs by influencing traveler behavior 

Read about how you can you squeeze more savings out of a mature travel program while keeping your travelers happy.

It’s truly the multi-million-dollar question: How can you squeeze more savings out of a mature travel program while keeping your travelers happy? The answer, says April Bridgeman, lies in how you persuade travelers to book and buy smarter.

“It’s very difficult to get improved savings out of a mature travel program unless you can engage travelers and affect traveler behavior,” says Bridgeman, senior vice president of strategic marketing for BCD Travel and managing director of its consulting arm, Advito.

The idea of traveler engagement isn’t new, but the opportunities to communicate and market to travelers in a compelling, professional way are improving. In a tech-enabled, fast-moving and heavily branded world, employees have become consumers. That makes it critical for employers to use effective communications that will capture travelers’ attention.

And that’s where companies are beginning to realize they need help. In a recent In Motion article, Miriam Moscovici, BCD’s director of emerging technologies, set out a few basic tips for how businesses can upgrade their engagement with travelers. What BCD Travel has heard from many clients since then is that they don’t have the time or expertise to take their traveler engagement strategies to the next level, especially as communications channels evolve so rapidly.

Travel managers tell Bridgeman that they understand the importance of marketing to and communicating with travelers. But many also believe that creating and executing a traveler engagement strategy on their own distracts them from their core duties. “Traveler engagement requires a skill set that many programs simply don’t have,” she explains. “It’s almost a digital marketing skill set. You need to put together a campaign and measure it.”

Bridgeman outlines what such a campaign needs to address:

  • How can a company achieve savings and increase employee satisfaction by changing traveler behavior?
  • How can traveler engagement help the company meet its business goals?
  • How can travel executives make the best use of communication assets already available to them, and make sense of new ones?
  • How can travel executives measure the effectiveness of traveler engagement and ensure it stays fresh and relevant?

As travel programs have moved from the concept of traveler engagement to actually planning and executing a strategy, many travel managers have realized they have a resource gap. Now, they’re asking for help, Bridgeman says, and Advito has responded. “We have launched a traveler engagement strategy practice aimed squarely at helping clients get closer to their travelers and other key stakeholders,” she says. “We have that digital marketing skill set they’re missing.”More information

For example, Advito now offers traveler engagement workshops that help travel executives get started. Advito consultants take workshop participants through a process for creating an effective—and workable—engagement strategy. It’s a step-by-step approach that helps travel executives set goals and frame key messages; inventory and assess communications assets; match communications assets to goals; and develop a plan for maintaining an effective strategy.

A face-to-face workshop lasts about a day and a half. The workshop also can be broken into smaller pieces delivered by phone, online or using video-conferencing tools.

“The process helps travel managers shape a traveler engagement strategy that fits their needs. It also helps them assess what they can tackle in-house and what will require outside help. We can provide the resources necessary to run a complete strategy on a client’s behalf—one that includes a subset of targeted campaigns that can lead to quick gains,” Bridgeman says.

“There’s a good opportunity right now to achieve major travel program improvements and savings by getting travelers engaged and changing their behavior in strategic ways,” she says. “We really urge companies to seize the moment.”

icon-electricAsk your account manager how Advito can help you engage travelers to influence their behavior and generate more savings. And check out BCD Travel’s white paper, Traveler Management: How to influence your employees to plan, book and travel smarter.

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