Top agencies sign for online business travel tendering service

Five of the UK’s largest travel management companies have signed up to an online business travel tendering process.

A total of eight agencies have committed to E Travel Advisors (ETA), which claims to be offering the world’s first dedicated online corporate travel request for proposal (RFP) service.

The agencies involved include American Express, ATP International, BTI UK, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Lonsdale Travel, Portman Travel, TQ3 Travel Solutions EMEA and TQ3 Travel Solutions UK. ETA says others are expected to join in the coming weeks.

Siemens UK has become the launch customer for the service, which claims to cut costs and save time in the tender process.

ETA, which has former Rosenbluth International European vice-president Mal Johnson as its chairman, said that the Siemens, which has a UK travel spend of more than £20 million, used the tool to select its travel management company and reduced the number of days spent on the project from 31 to nine days.

ETA is described as a procurement tool which automates the RFP process to help corporate buyers complete “faster, higher quality” business travel tenders. Initially launched for travel management tenders, it is to be extended to include other supplier deals such as airlines and hotels.

The company claims that buyers can save up to 70% in time taken to solicit and review tenders while making better-informed selections using sophisticated evaluation tools. Suppliers can save up to 51% in time taken to respond to RFPs while improving the quality of submissions to prospective clients, according to ETA.

Buyers pay a one-off fee to complete a tender using ETA while suppliers are charged an annual subscription to participate.

ETA managing director Karen McGee, who formerly held senior sales positions with CWT and TQ3, said the service was launched because she identified travel tendering as a “major problem area” for both buyers and suppliers.

“Both sides complain they receive poor-quality information from the other and the whole process is cumbersome,” she said. “ETA solves these issues by automating the process and giving buyers and suppliers the right tools to ask the right questions of each other.”

Siemens UK travel manager Chris Reynolds described the service as a “vast improvement” over previous travel tendering processes.

He said: “It significantly reduced the time it took us to carry out the tendering process and the quality of the responses from the bidders was much higher, Hopefully all travel tenders will be conducted this way in the future because it is much more efficient and cost-effective.”

Report by Phil Davies