Travel programme reviews
Work out what is wrong before you decide what to change.
Before you go to market, it is worth knowing what you are actually trying to fix. Is it the TMC? Is it something you are doing? Or does the programme no longer work in the shape it is in? Three different problems, three different fixes — and a tender only solves one of them.
The questions I get asked
Six questions clients bring me
- Should we test the market?
- Why are travellers booking outside policy, and how do we improve compliance?
- Why do travellers keep telling us they can find it cheaper themselves?
- Why can nobody change or cancel a booking without phoning the TMC?
- Why can we still not get one view of what travel actually costs us?
- Are the savings we report every quarter real?
Every one of these has several possible causes. The cause decides the fix, which is why establishing it matters more than responding quickly. Ninety-six per cent of companies end up staying with their incumbent. It is worth asking whether that is because the real issues were never found.
Exhibit B · What a review usually finds
Most findings belong to somebody else
| Ref | Finding | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| B.01 | Hotel rates loaded, but never available on the nights people travel | TMC |
| B.02 | Virtual card declined at a fifth of European properties | TREASURY |
| B.03 | Online adoption reported at 78%. Servicing adoption is 41% | YOU |
| B.04 | Savings baseline never agreed with Finance | FINANCE |
| B.05 | Traveller behaviour driving cost the programme never priced for | YOU |
Handing a travel manager a finding they cannot act on is how reviews get shelved. Every finding comes with the function that owns it, and whether you can act on it alone, need to influence, or have to escalate.
One year of hotel spend. One company.
Three systems. Three answers. Nobody should average them.
Most people pick one and move on. The gap is usually where the answer is.
Possible outcomes
Most sourcing consultancies can reach the first one.
- Retender
- Renegotiate
- Fix specific problems, then reassess
- Change the technology, not the supplier
- Address governance, policy or payment
- Investigate further
- Leave a working arrangement alone
A recommendation to change nothing is a real outcome and often a valuable one. It is also why WEST10 does not run tenders. If the organisation recommending the tender is the one that would be paid to run it, the advice is worth less.
How a review works
Four stages. No pre-written conclusion.
- 01What you think is wrongYou tell me what you believe the problem is. I write it down at the start, so at the end we can both see whether you were right. Often you are. When you are not, it is usually because the real cause sits somewhere you have no visibility of.
- 02Where your evidence comes fromNot all of your data is equally reliable. Your card statements and finance records can be checked independently. Your TMC's reports are produced by the company you are assessing. A reported saving is somebody's calculation, not a fact. I tell you which is which. And when two systems disagree, I do not split the difference — I find out why they disagree.
- 03What else it could beLow hotel compliance could be your travellers. It could also be rates that were never loaded, a hotel that will not accept your payment method, or a booking tool that does not show the right properties. Four different problems, four different fixes, and three of them have nothing to do with your travellers. I work through the alternatives before settling on one.
- 04What to do, and how you will know it workedYou get a recommendation, who needs to action each part of it, and an honest list of what I could not establish. You also get the measure: which number should move, by how much, by when. Agreed before you start, so that in six months nobody is arguing about whether it worked.
Broader advisory
Not every question needs a full review
I also work on individual areas of a programme, as a short piece of work or alongside an in-house team.
- TMC performance and service model design
- Travel programme effectiveness and design
- Booking technology and content
- Policy, and the gap between policy and behaviour
- Supplier strategy and commercial arrangements
- Programme cost, and what is really being paid for
- Data and reporting, and whether it supports the decisions being taken on it
Tell me what is going on. I will tell you honestly whether I can help.
Speak to Karen →