That’s right, saving money with your travel program isn’t rocket science. It’s actually easy to make an impact on your travel spend if you know what to do, and most importantly, you have the right travel management partner.
Having a managed corporate travel program —where an external travel management company, who manages the booking, budgeting, analysis and insight into travel policy performance — is key to reducing your corporate travel costs.
Though many smaller accounts may lack the spend requirements (buying power) to gain contracted rates with airlines, hotels or rental car companies. The good news is, suppliers are enhancing their programs to offer custom-made solutions to allow these types of companies to gain greater spend control and access more benefits.
For example, the airlines offer a variety of small-business loyalty programs that give more back to smaller businesses. These programs are separate from the standard frequent flier programs or award miles travelers may earn. The small-business loyalty programs are designed to encourage repeat business with the airline. As an example, Delta’s SkyBonus Program requires a company to have a minimum of five travelers flying per year with at least $5,000 of cumulative spending. (You can become a member of their SkyBonus Elite Program after you exceed 2 million points in a calendar year.)
These loyalty programs are a great benefit as they provide percentage discounts across a wide selection of airfare types or, even better, award points which can equate to free tickets.
At Teplis Travel, we manage the enrollment and tracking of small-business loyalty programs on behalf of all our corporate travel clients and present the value-added savings this program brings to their program, year after year.
Companies in the medium to large organization category will find, by aligning themselves to one supplier, they can be rewarded with substantive discounts stemming from the competition between suppliers.
Our Account Managers work to assess a company’s travel trends and expenditures to determine the benefits of a preferred hotel or airline program (where loyalty is rewarded) against a ‘best rate of the day’ agreement.
We customize each corporate travel program to include selected techniques that drive savings. By leveraging the total travel spend of an organization, we can negotiate supplier discounts in all purchasing categories including air, hotel, car rental and ground transportation.
- Airline – If volume is sufficient, we assemble reporting to enable the negotiation of a primary airline contract. The markets where spend is concentrated would determine the best carrier for a first contract, however each airline’s market share, by city pair, will also reveal which markets could be leveraged to generate the best discount. (Moving volume to a different carrier, in a market where that carrier is striving for dominance, is the key to getting the best discount.)
- Car Rental – Teplis provides benchmark studies on consolidated volumes to assist our corporate travel clients in soliciting bids from selected rental car companies to achieve maximum savings on their behalf.
- Hotel – We explore hotel chain discounts, if appropriate, and client specific, locally negotiated rates at individual hotels in those destinations frequented by employees, consultants, guests and other associated travelers to archive greater savings based on the travel requirements of each customer.
Delivering a strong Return on Investment to our corporate travel customers has been part of Teplis Travel’s strategy for almost 50 years. We focus on creating programs that will drive results and deliver measurable savings. If you’re interested in learning how Teplis Travel can deliver more to your company’s bottom line, contact us for a free travel management consultation.
