Feature: Corporate self booking tools

Corporate self booking tools: An explanation of the background to self booking tools, how they are used and the opportunities they provide. Sponsored by Sabre. Written by David Dalgety.

Business travellers are increasingly able to enjoy the advantages leisure travellers experience booking trips online. Aside from increased employee satisfaction, companies are deriving real business benefits too.

In 2001 US business travel expenditure reached US$174.7 billion. Online corporate travel in the same period reached US$8.6 billion representing an overall adoption rate of 9.5%. PhoCusWright report online corporate travel expenditure will represent 18.6% of the total US market by 2003. Forrester predicts that by 2004 77% of business travel will be booked online in North America as a whole.

Uptake across Europe has been slow over the past four years. However anecdotal evidence would suggest that self booking tools have reached somewhere around 5% penetration among European companies today and that a significant turn in attitude from initial scepticism has occurred over the past year.

Differences in culture, language, currency, fares and pricing mean the European landscape is varied. Labour dynamics, multiple GDSs, differing levels of agency automation and travel management maturity further complicate the environment compared with the US where these factors are broadly the same across the whole country including a far higher degree of domestic point-to-point travel. Continental Europe also sees more business travel by rail.

Self booking tools are better suited to less complex itineraries. Given that most booking software originally was developed in the US it has taken the intervening period from when those tools first appeared to become more adapted to Europe.

Not surprisingly adoption varies between country with Scandinavia, the UK and Germany leading the way followed some way behind by Italy, France and Spain.

However one has to bear in mind, according to Toby Joseph chief operating officer at TQ3, “that adoption indicators don’t always give the full picture. The real question is how many self bookings needed some form of assistance for instance on-screen, over the telephone or during file finishing”. TQ3 take a consultative approach helping clients to adapt and implement tools best suited to their own environment within the context of wider T&E management.

There are a wide range of US originated booking solutions on the market including Bo