The round of late summer/autumn Business Travel Events opened on September 5th with the Finass Business Travel Workshop by Finass Travel for clients and travel managers. Daniel Wittwer and his team invited participants for the first time to the WTC Zurich-Oerlikon under the banner “Rethink Travel Management Processes”. Our collegue Michael Zwickl also joined the folks on stage. Daniel Wittwer once again managed to engage and excite the participants.
For several years, the event was held at the SIX Convention Point in Zurich. In the meantime, SIX has moved to the Hardturm area and their old building is being completely refurbished. This meant that a new location had to be found for the event. The almost forgotten WTC was a perfect match. Daniel Wittwer greeted the participants and lead folks through the program. With a good mix of almost 70 participants, both company and vendor representatives, Daniel managed to set a new attendance record once again.
“But that is not defined anywhere!” – new challenges for Travel Policies
Should a corporate travel policy really outline every single detail for planning, booking, conducting and expensing of a business trip? Or should it be a case where clear general conditions and guard rails are defined that allow for a sensible management of the travel budgets? Andrea Zimmermann, owner of btm4u in Darmstadt used many examples to illustrate where the bad habit of the so-called “unbundling” of air fares has lead. Identical additional services, even just comparing two airlines, are hardly ever called the same nor would they cost the same. True comparisons are hardly possible and what the companies would wish to use and include would fill dozens of pages and require almost daily updates.
With a great deal of charm, humour Andrea Zimmermann advocates a healthy dose of common sense when dealing with travel policies. Naturally, processes, partners and applications along with Travel Risk Management needs to be covered but rather than explicitly define every single possible additional service per airline, hotel chain or car rental it makes more sense to define the service offering type (i.e. seat reservation, meal on long haul flights, fast lane if required, etc.). Permission to use Sharing Economy service providers should also be included in this section of a travel policy or the reasons of why not to use them. A traveller will align and plan according to these general guidelines. The core objective is to ensure that the company has access to meaningful and complete trip data for duty of care and also for usage in future contract negotiations with vendors. Whoever infringes the policy can then of course be admonished afterwards.
“But that is not defined anywhere!” – correct, and this is the way it will stay!
AirBnB – Sharing Economy for business travel
No final resolution yet for legalities involved, but still AirBnB wants to push into the business travel market and be included as options in travel policies.
For Christopher Bergau, Manager Business Development Business Travel with AirBnB in Berlin, it was the first appearance on a Swiss stage. Until recently, AirBnB for Business solutions were predominantly offered in large markets such as the US and the UK. With approx. 275.000 corporate clients under their belt, AirBNB seeks to explore and conquer the DACH region. New standards for accommodation, a dashboard for travel managers, connections to Travel Risk Management providers and Concur, along with optimized payment processes are expected to dispel corporate clients’ concerns in this region.
In his presentation, Mr. Bergau showed how easily appropriate accommodation for business travellers can be found and booked and how this information is made available to travel managers real time.
However, with regard to duty of care, payments and data security there still seem to be some open questions. This means that the defined standards so far are internal, invoices currently do not conform to each market’s VAT legislation requirements and traveller data (including personal data) too transparent, according to some colleagues’ present. AirBnB, however, is working to resolve this issues at high speed and it can be assumed that solutions will be in found soon.
We at travelBrain assume that AirBnB for Business will follow Uber for Business’ example and will be included in companies’ programs and become an integral part of in their travel policies. Simplicity, cost savings potential and user pressure will assist with this endeavour.
Travel Management in the Cloud – intelligent end to end solutions
So, what was the issue with the Cloud again? All bad, huh? My colleague, Michael Zwickl, MD of our sister company expenseBrain GmbH in Oehringen tried to calm the finass clients’ fears of the “looming” cloud during his presentation, or rather to explain that a travel booking has already been being processed in the Cloud since the 70s. The difference to today’s world is that more process steps of planning, booking, conducting and expensing of a trip can be done via the internet and on mobile devices.
Michael listed which suppliers and programs are available to small, midsize and large clients on today’s market and which combinations bring better added value. Whilst the larger suppliers such as Amadeus, with Amadeus Cytric Travel and Expense, KDS with Neo, Concur with Travel & Expense and traveldoo cover large portions of this area, smaller companies such as ChromeRiver, MobileXpense, SRXP, Coupa and many more concentrate on the expense management part of the process and connections to systems that handle process steps before and after.
expenseBrain has evaluated systems against corporate criteria in innumerable projects and implemented them. Our colleagues will help you with topics in this area.
On the road with the Dalai Lama – a portrait from different perspective
And suddenly the lights went out!
But that was intended by Manuel Bauer, photographer from Zurich who wanted to direct the participants focus to the screen unequivocally. Mr. Bauer was the Dalai Lama’s official photographer and accompanied him on his travels around the globe. He was next to his Holiness when he met Heads of State and Religions on official or private visits, during the UN full assembly address, at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony but also during his meditation and prayer sessions, secluded from the public eye.
In a visually stunning lecture, Bauer drew attention to the issues and also the challenges of the 82-year-old Dalai Lama and Tibetans in general. Exciting, entertaining but also packed with open questions that made the finass clients ponder.
You can find more on this interesting topic on Manuel Bauer’s website or in the following books:
- Escape from Tibet (Flucht aus Tibet) and
- On the road for peace: His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama photographed by Manuel Bauer (Unterwegs für den Frieden: Seine Heiligkeit der 14. Dalai Lama fotografiert von Manuel Bauer)
This impressive lecture was then the hot topic at the social gathering that followed. The sponsor this year was Cathay Pacific. Naturally, there was still plenty of time to network and discuss the presentations of the day. We were able to utilise the time well. And should Michael Zwickl and I not have been able to speak to every participant, then we are definitely available for a follow up anytime.
Copies of the presentations for the business travel topics can be viewed or downloaded, as always, from the Finass website.
Many thanks to Daniel Wittwer and his team that we were able to participate again in this year’s Finass Business Travel Workshop. It is always a joy to be a part of it and there is always plenty to learn.
Adrian Matt for travelBrain
