Farelogix is inviting 15 to 20 corporate travel buyers "who are proven industry thought leaders" to a new forum in January to address what they "need to do [their] job more effectively as relates to the changing face of airline products, technologies, travelers, and managed travel programs." At least one invited buyer is not sure of whether to attend for fear of legitimizing the effort.
It has always been interesting to watch how [airline-GDS] skirmishes have played out in the past. Travel buyers can and should be more engaged with respect to closely managing their entire travel and expense "supply chain." In a managed travel program there are a myriad of things that form your supply chain. Everything from the products and services consumed (ex: airline seat, hotel room, etc), the middleman who helps with the purchase (ex: TMC), the form of payment, online booking tool, mid and back office technologies, and anything else that is part of the end-to-end sourcing process by which corporations buy and manage their T&E spend.
In
Part One I gave my view as to who should buy travel within a corporation. To recap, I pointed out that no one person should do it. Instead an alliance of procurement and operational management was required pulled together by the influence and gravitas of a hands-on board sponsor.
This debate has rumbled on for a very long time and I expect it will continue particularly at this time of financial and strategic difficulty. Suppliers have to earn more and corporations have to pay less to achieve their recovery strategy so it has never been more important that the function in the middle of the pricing debate gets it right. If they don’t we will end up either with less products or fewer customers or perhaps both. The key reason for there being an impasse in this debate is there is no right answer for all the stakeholders. It very much depends on the flexibility, specialist knowledge and skills of individuals concerned.
