1997 Spring ACTE Quarterly: President's Message | Corporate Travel Intranet Sites | 1997 Member Survey

Travel management experts believe that intranet-based travel information sites will soon be an essential part of the travel management process -- and accessed as naturally as e-mail.

Ever since travel reservations were made possible on the Internet, travel managers have viewed the interactive reservations process with curiosity and wariness. Curiosity, because they quickly recognized its ability to efficiently communicate information of all kinds to travelers. And wariness over issues of confidentiality, user buy-in, policy compliance and technical compatibility.

Now, a growing number of companies are facilitating interactive reservations by creating their own travel department sites on their company intranets. "These are a new dimension in the ability to manage travel because so much of managing travel is really about managing information, both before and after the reservations process," said Tom Wilkinson, President of Travel Management Group in Alexandria, Virginia. "The intranet site can be an extraordinarily effective vehicle for internal communications to and from the travel manager and traveler, among travelers, and also between the corporation and suppliers."

And interestingly enough, many of these intranet sites don't have yet have anything to do with reservations; they're simply ways travel managers can direct users quickly to the information they need. The World Bank, for example, offers airline schedules, lists of preferred hotels, a link to worldwide weather forecasts, and health information vital for the bank's roughly 6,000 travelers, many of whom travel to third world countries. "The site has been a work in progress," according to Debbie Horel, for six months, with ad hoc enhancements added regularly. The booking engine won't be put up for another month, she added, and that's only for a test. "Only once all the bugs are out of the system and we're confident that travelers will feel comfortable using it will we roll it out. We don't feel any pressure to adhere to a particular timetable," she said.

The actual graphics and content set-ups of travel department sites vary considerably from company to company. "That's really the beauty of them, that they can be customized for each company, even customized as you go," said Danny Hood, Executive Vice President for World Travel Partners. "You can take a lot of rules and lists and put them somewhere where they're easily found. There's no fumbling with a hotel book, or printed info on a ticket jacket, or phone tag with a travel manager or travel agent whenever there's a question. Everybody has the same access to the same information, and the company always has firm control of that information."

Some basic elements of typical travel department sites include areas on the following subjects:

Corporate travel policy. All the rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and do's and don'ts, that can be regularly accessed electronically or downloaded and printed. Many companies put a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) icon in this area. Here too is where negotiated rates usually go.

News. Some companies put up a weekly newsletter, created by the travel department (often with help from corporate communications). Others put up a newsletter or regular news briefs supplied by their travel agency. Some also offer news flashes, warning of a pending transport strike, massive weather disturbance, political instability, etc. The news area is also where travelers are alerted to changes in corporate policy, or updates on preferred vendors.

Destination information. Many companies are building substantial databases on their top 10 or 25 destinations. Companies with international travelers often offer a safety and security area here, with advisories downloaded from Kroll (a global safety consulting company) and the U.S. State Department, in addition to their own proprietary security assessments.

Here too some companies are including driving directions to hotels, plants, offices, and other locations, accompanied by photos of the buildings or sites the travelers are looking for. Glaxo Wellcome's site links its destination information to the local convention and visitors bureau Web site, so travelers can to look up restaurants, special events, and the general lay of the land before or during their trip.

This is also an area ripe for hot links to travel planning resources on the Internet, such as Travelocity (www.travelocity.com), Excite's City Net (www.citynet.com), biztravel.com (www.biztravel.com), World Travel Guide (www.wtgonline.com), restaurant guides (the ones on Pathfinder (www.pathfinder.com) include Zagat and thrive@eats, which are particularly good), and to specialty Web sites like ATM finders. Two trade magazines, Business Travel News (www.btnonline.com) and Travel Weekly (www.traveler.net/two/twpages/twnews.html), and a consumer publication, Business Traveller International (www.btonline.com), all have superb Web sites filled with solid corporate travel advice and information, and hot links to various interesting (and useful) suppliers and services.

Maps. Click an icon for a hot link to any of several downloadable mapping programs, such as MapQuest (www.mapquest.com), which offer point-to-point driving directions virtually anywhere in the world.

Forms. Everything from E-mail templates, to communicate reservation requests to a travel agent and/or the travel manager; expense report forms; applications for a corporate card or for the premium programs, like Hilton Honors or American Express's Membership Miles, of preferred vendors. Texas Instrument's site includes a form to update the traveler's profile at the agency and also in the CRS, a feedback form to fill out on the agency (as well as the TI travel department) and a first-class exception form.

Expense reporting. By clicking on the expense report icon, users can find per diem rates, roundtrip rates and distances for driver reimbursement, expense reporting software to download, and contacts at accounts receivable.

Ground transportation. Information on car rentals, limousine services, and public transit systems at various locations.

Supplier links. The primary link is to the travel agency, with contact lists of travel counselors, and links to the Web sites of preferred vendors in all categories.

Bulletin boards. An invaluable source of information for travelers, who can benefit from the shared travel experience of colleagues. Bulletin boards are also being used more and more for meeting planning.

GETTING STARTED

Planning
Although setting up a travel department intranet site isn't technically complex, it does require advance planning and some help from other departments and, of course, an intranet that's already up and running. The company IT department is a good place to start; technicians are likely to have already set up the corporate intranet and various other sites for, say, Human Resources or Shareholder Services, and will be able to steer you in the right direction for help in writing text and creating graphics. They will also advise on issues like system platform integration and firewalls, which protect the travel site from viruses and encroachment from outsiders. Some easily overcome technical difficulties occur when companies have software like Lotus notes groupwear on their intranets instead of Web browsers, which are necessary to link the intranet pages to the Internet.

Content
Once the technical issues have been addressed, then consider content. Texas Instrument's manager of travel systems Richard Wooten, who along with colleague Colleen Guhin has been working for the last year on their site, suggest you plan what you want to say and how you say it very carefully. "Do story boards" Wooten advises, "and edit everything to read exactly as you want it before you put it up. It's easy to go down the wrong path, and it's much better to change it before it goes on line than after. Deciding exactly what you want before you approach outside vendors will also help keep costs down," he said.

Costs
Consider long and short term costs. An intranet site, even one done mostly in-house, can still run in the tens of thousands of dollars and that doesn't include maintenance. Some companies have been able to defray some of the costs by selling advertising spots to preferred vendors. The advertisers, usually hotels and airlines, get preferential placement and the opportunity to communicate their messages on everything from special deals to sale fares directly to the consumer.

Maintenance
Still, you still have to allocate manpower and resources to keep the site up to date, and to manage popular but labor-intensive special features like chat rooms and bulletin boards. don't want to go through the exercise of creating or managing the content? More and more companies are turning to their travel agencies for help. Danny Hood of WorldTravel Partners has a team of employees that help design and integrate Web sites for clients for a fee. "It's turning into an interesting profit center for us," he said.

Outlook
With or without an intranet-based booking system, travel management experts believe that travel department sites will soon be an essential part of the travel management process and accessed as naturally as E-mail. "There clearly is a financial benefit to linking the travel department onto a corporate intranet," said Rich Siemborski, Senior Vice President of the Interactive Travel Group for American Express. "Any time there's better communication of policy and preferred rates you'll get better enforcement, which is the linchpin of sound travel management. A recent study showed that 95% of employees were willing to follow policy, but only 40% knew what it was. Having it up on a big screen is a foolproof way to make sure that the other 60% don't have any more excuses."

Coming Soon:
Interactive Booking Systems that integrate with electronic calendars. The booking system is smart enough to know that if Jane Smith will; be in New York on Tuesday the 19th for a meeting, it should begin to search for a reservation at the preferred hotel property at the corporate rate and for airline seats booked according to Jane Smith's profile and at her preferred times.

A proliferation if third party technology companies like Canada-Based CEL Corporation will soon be offering intranet-based reservations systems through Web to mainframe integration software. These programs seamlessly link a secure corporate intranet with the CRS used by a company's corporate travel agency. Choices are filtered according to corporate policy; car and hotel information is displayed according to the lowest available price, and travel managers may use the lowest fare option to force bargain fare searches each time a reservation is confirmed.

Spring ACTE Quarterly: President's Message | Corporate Travel Intranet Sites | 1997 Member Survey