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CORPORATE TRAVEL

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GET UP TO SPEED ON THE CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

In a fast-paced business environment, a clear line of communication is vital in ensuring success. The Caterham F1 team make sure they use the right

technology to keep them connected wherever they are in the world

THE NEED TO TRAVEL Face-to-face meetings

still offer the best business returns

COST, SAFETY AND COMFORT

How does the travel manager balance

everything?

A spotlight on

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December 2013

2 · DECEMBER 2013 AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

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In line with the global recovery, corporate travel is on the increase again — in the US it’s already at pre-recessionary levels and while Europe is still lagging behind, growth rates in the UK are set to accelerate in 2014, says Catherine McGavock, Director, Operations — Europe, Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).

A time for changeC

orporate trav-el fuels econom-ic growth — it helps to build re-lationships that drive business, and face-to-face

meetings are particularly impor-tant in rapidly expanding markets such as Brazil, Russia and China. However, this can be expensive in terms of cost and time. In order to manage these costs and keep trav-ellers safe it’s essential that busi-nesses have a handle on some well learned business travel fundamen-tal questions:

1. Is the trip required?2. What’s the most cost effective way of getting the traveller to where they need to be in a way that ensures maximum productivity?3. How will they keep their travellers safe?4. How much will the business be spending overall?

More people than ever are confi -dent about booking their own trav-el and are used to being able to tai-lor trips to suit their own personal

tastes. But this makes enforcing travel policy much more of an issue and raises concerns about how to keep employees safe.

New travel experienceTechnology is driving lots of change for business travellers and those who manage this spend in terms of booking and trip experience.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is in the process of developing a new code for dis-tribution of airfares — NDC (New Distribution Capability). This is in-tended to create an Amazon-style air booking experience to allow for the inclusion of other services like ground transportation and make it more consumer friendly. But this will also help booking systems to recognise traveller profi les, giving rise to the concern that this insight could be used to diff erentiate pric-ing, with less price sensitive travel-lers being quoted higher rates. This is at pilot stage at the moment but if rolled out could have a signifi cant impact on business travellers and those who pay the bills.

Not only that, but new traveller tools are providing complete door-

to-door itineraries in a single lo-cation, complete with street lev-el views and recommendations of where to eat — ideal if you’re unfa-miliar with restaurants in Boston or Birmingham.

All of these help to put the trav-eller in control, providing the right information at the right time and enhancing their experience.

Driving changeCorporate travel is a massive indus-try in its own right — the UK gov-ernment is in the throes of deciding on game changing infrastructural investments such as HS2 and Lon-don’s airports that will signifi cantly impact those working in the indus-try, as well as travellers.

As with so many aspects of our in-creasingly fast paced world the only constant is change itself. All of the above — the global economy; man-agement issues; traveller behav-iour; technological developments and decisions on major infrastruc-ture signifi cantly impact this vital sector. This Corporate Travel Report will look at many of these topics and provide insight from some of the leading fi gures in the industry.

Catherine McGavock, Director, Operations — Europe, GBTA

“As with so many aspects of our increasingly fast paced world the only constant is change itself”

CHALLENGES

EDITOR’S PICK

CORPORATE TRAVEL4TH EDITION, DECEMBER 2013

Managing Director: Carl SoderblomEditorial and Production Manager:

Faye GodfreyBusiness Developer: Talia Levine

Responsible for this issueProject Manager: Soha Suliman

Phone: +44 (0) 7789 967 152E-mail: [email protected]

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New technology is aiding business travellers as people are able to work on the move,

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INSPIRATION

NEWS

Mobile phones help keep F1 cars in contention around the world

Reliable communications with headquarters is important for all business travellers these days, but for Formula 1 racing teams compet-ing abroad it can affect the whole outcome of a race.

The huge team of drivers, engi-neers, logistics specialists and oth-er staff need to be in constant com-munication in the run up to every F1 event, coordinating the million and one details required to get the show on the road. In the run-up to the race, engineers will be sending and receiving gigabytes of data.

It is a communications manag-er’s worst nightmare.

Complex requirementsCaterham F1 Team, one of the most exiting new entrants to the top tier of motorsport, needed to set up a mobile phone network that would be capable of handling the enor-mous demands placed on it at the F1 circuits round the world.

“Communication is incredibly important for our team, as it is for

all the teams in Formula 1,” says Graham Watson, team manager at Caterham F1 Team. “We have to react and deal with problems so much faster than ever before, so having a clear line of communica-tion is vital.”

Caterham F1 Team needed both voice and data to ensure everyone had the tools they needed to finish the job in the very short timescales available in the run-up to an F1 race.

One of the main challenges was finding a system that would oper-ate seamlessly and without major set-up costs at any F1 circuit in the world. Although mobile network operators exist that cover much of the globe, in reality they operate as a number of separate national net-works and global roaming is almost impossible to achieve.

Finding solutionsThe answer was to go with an in-ternational virtual mobile network operator (MVNO), which provides global coverage by a network of agreements with local networks.

With a system provided by an international MVNO, in this case Truphone, every member of the team can be equipped with one smartphone with one SIM card. No need to swap sims or ensure ev-ery handset has the latest contacts list and all the fully updated ap-ps. Even the need for training was

minimal as the phones work ex-actly as they do at home.

The MVNO network also offers local phone numbers on the same SIM card, so local contractors can get in contact easily, quickly and without incurring international call rates. And, of course, it makes

it easier for members of the team to ring each other even if they are only on the other side of the track.

The massive amounts of da-ta generated in the super-high-tech engine control and monitor-ing systems of the latest cars can also be sent quickly back to head-quarters in Leafield for analysis, and the equally massive software updates that result can be just as quickly sent out for downloading to the cars.

Data is even needed as a race progresses, a time when every mo-ment counts and downtime is not an option. Tom Webb, head of com-munications, explains: “We oper-ate on a global level with a need to communicate effectively wherev-er we are in the world, at any time of the day or night. We have to send huge amounts of data back to our HQ in the UK and without the abil-ity to do that quickly and efficient-ly we simply would not be able to compete.”

Despite its image as the sport of the super-rich, Formula 1 is just as cost-sensitive as any other busi-ness, and is on track for savings of about 30 per cent on its mobile communications bill by adopting the international MVNO approach.

■ Question: How does a complex operation touring abroad keep in contact with its base in the UK?

■ Answer: International virtual mobile network operators can provide mobile communications across borders.

Graham Watson, TEAM

MANAGER, CATERHAM F1 TEAM

“We have to react and deal with problems so much faster than ever before, so having a clear line of communication is vital”

Technology takes the pain out of paying the billsIn these days of mass travel, with business people going to the ends of the earth to make sales or source cheaper supplies, it seems strange that money is stuck in the last century.

Cash or credit cards are still the main forms of payment, making administering payments a major headache for both companies and the travellers themselves.

But new payment technologies are arriving that will make fund-ing business travel much cheaper and easier.

The latest trend is for virtual cred-it cards, says David Chapple, Event Director at Centaur Exhibitions and Supplier Director at the Institute of Travel and Meetings. “Virtual cards have a unique number that is track-able to a specific transaction and can be mapped back to individual profit centres with no paperwork involved,” he explains. “Lodge cards are used with travel management companies to pay for travel, and can help reduce paperwork, control fraud and automatically identify the best travel deals.”

Contactless payment cards will give travel managers a much finer grained picture of what travellers are spending the money on, Chap-ple believes, as well as being more convenient for the travellers.

“With the hotel, you couldn’t track the incidentals such as inter-net access, bar, room service and so on. With the new payment technol-ogies you get a much better picture of how much the bedroom cost and how much the incidentals cost.”

With the arrival of virtual wallets and payment software in smart-phones, the depth of reporting will become even better and the travel-ler will get better transparency and security because all transactions will appear on the phone’s screen, updated in real time.

Further in the future, payment systems could guide travellers to the most cost efficient travel option even in unfamiliar cities.

“Imagine a traveller coming in-to Heathrow for the first time,” Chapple says. “They would usu-ally just take a cab, but the app could kick in as soon as the mo-bile divert comes on, telling them that they have an hour to go before their first meeting and it would be cheaper to take the tube.”

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

GAIN THE COMPETITIVE EDGEThe Caterham F1 Team needed both voice and data to ensure everyone had the tools they needed to finish the job PHOTOS: CATERHAM F1

DECEMBER 2013 · 5AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

Truphone knows that communication is key for corporate travellers and has created a mobile phone service that ensures optimum connectivity.

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Business as usual

The internet and the explosion of mobile devices have changed the way we communicate globally. More than that though, they’ve changed expectations of how we should communicate. When it’s possible to call across the world in an instant, we expect that we should all be available in an instant too, no matter what. Yet, despite technological breakthroughs, there’s still a gap between our expectations and reality.

The internet may lead us to expect ubiquitous communication, but as soon as we travel abroad it can be-come diffi cult to keep in touch.

Business travellers often suf-fer the most from these issues. Forced to find ways to adapt, ma-ny come to rely on wi-fi connec-tions or second SIMs — solutions that limit communication fur-ther and make staying connect-ed an inconvenience of SIM, pass-word and bill juggling.

However, there is one mobile op-erator that is overcoming these limitations: Truphone. Truphone, the world’s only global mobile net-work without country borders, us-es patented technology to close the gap between expectations and reality. With Truphone, business travellers are more productive and

more available when they travel — and they can always rely on Tru-phone’s global service.

Introducing TruphoneTruphone has a lot in common with traditional mobile operators. It uses the same radio masts and provides coverage in over 200 countries around the world. However, where tradition-al mobile operators connect local net-works and then struggle to commu-nicate across country borders, Tru-phone’s unifi ed infrastructure has no such limitations.

This makes it the only mobile net-work operator in the world that doesn’t restrict your business to the borders of your home country. In-stead, Truphone’s unifi ed global in-frastructure expands your reach to cover every country where it operates its own network — currently the US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong, the Nether-lands, Germany, Poland and Spain.

Travelling within the Truphone Zone is just like being at home. That means there are no roaming charg-es, call quality is improved and data is more reliable. This is particularly advantageous for international busi-ness travellers, making them more productive by ensuring communi-cation is crystal clear, reliable and cost-eff ective. At a time when CCMI research shows exorbitant roaming costs have motivated 40 percent of large businesses to either forbid or curtail travellers’ mobile usage, the

fact that Truphone removes roam-ing fees within the Truphone Zone is especially valuable. It means travel-lers remain a part of their workforce wherever they are in the Truphone Zone, because communication is no longer limited by cost.

Research shows this doesn’t just make travellers more productive, but also makes international travel less stressful too. Even now, inability to keep in touch with family and work friends while abroad is one of the big-gest complaints for business travel-lers, but Truphone’s approach elimi-nates that problem to the benefi t of both businesses and individuals.

It’s not just international travel-lers that become more productive thanks to Truphone’s unique ap-proach. Truphone’s global bundles also improve productivity for man-agers by making it easier to oversee usage. Bundles include a single al-lowance of minutes, megabytes and messages that work across the en-tire Truphone Zone and can be both shared across large teams and cus-tomised to suit individuals.

Truphone’s range of regional add-ons ensure tariff s can be adapted to the needs of each business, support-ing users and empowering them to do great work all around the world.

Bringing you closerWith unique patented technology, Truphone also bridges the gap be-tween reality and expectation in

ways no other operator can replicate.Customers can have multiple inter-national numbers on one SIM, so you can have a number for every country in the Truphone Zone all on one hand-set. These numbers are always active and are centralised to a single voice-mail account, so you never miss a call.

It also ensures global contacts can always call a local number and get in touch at local rates. If you’ve got an Australian number with Truphone then it doesn’t matter if you’re in Sydney or Southampton, your con-tacts down under can always get hold of you on a local number. That means better sound quality, faster connections and no international charges — all of which encourages closer communication.

Truphone’s patented Smart Call-er ID technology even assists in this process by automatically ensuring contacts see the right number for them. Call a colleague in the US and Smart Caller ID will make sure they see your American number, so they always know the best number to ring you back on.

Truphone’s technology doesn’t just offer local calls to others though. Every call within the Tru-phone Zone is treated as a local call.

This eliminates the barrier of cost and ensures business travellers can always get in touch with contacts throughout the zone. It’s no won-der new Truphone users make and receives an average of seven times more calls to other countries. It’s a fi gure that’s only likely to rise as the Truphone Zone will further ex-pand in 2014.

A global experienceAs the Truphone Zone continues to expand, so does the scope of Tru-phone’s global customer service. Truphone’s dedicated business sup-port team isn’t just available from anywhere in the world, but is also available around the clock and in diff erent languages.

In fact, Truphone will stop at noth-ing to provide the level of service modern businesses expect. Land in Hong Kong and have problem with your SIM? A Truphone representa-tive is on their way to help with a new SIM already loaded with your old number — a truly unique service experience that demonstrates how committed Truphone is to improv-ing the way we all communicate, and to fi nally aligning twenty-fi rst cen-tury expectations with reality.


■ What is the single biggest issue facing the business traveller today?

How to remain productive whilst on the road is what we hear fre-quently — mobile tools are real-ly helpful but balancing internal security and remote access/al-lowing applications on company devices can be a conflict. An on-going pain point is the airport ex-perience — getting there, getting through it, and managing disrup-tions. Most travellers are happy to follow a company travel poli-cy as long as it is comprehensive and well thought through, how-ever travel is still a personal ex-perience and savvy business trav-ellers will always look to opti-mise company policy while max-imising the personal benefits.

■ High speed rail is touted as the future competition for air travel in Europe. How do the two stack up?

High speed rail makes travel-ling in the continent much eas-ier and is definitely challenging air, for example Barcelona and Madrid have had high speed rail for some time and we see much more utilisation of rail than flights, and now with the expan-sion to Paris, Europe is becom-ing much more joined up. With-in the UK, any train journey into/out of London has followed this

trend, with trains to Paris, Brus-sels, Manchester and Newcas-tle becoming more popular. The UK’s high speed rail will make a big difference to the west coast — today we are challenged not on-ly by speed but also by high pric-es and general overcrowding. If we had something similar to the German ICE service, intra-Europe rail could be serious competition to the airlines for key European cities. At the moment the sweet spot on journey time seems to be around three hours — and air is still a contender.

■ Will the emphasis remain

on cost savings or, as the economy improves, will we go back to the bad old days when executives demanded super-luxury travel at any cost?

It is highly unlikely that we will return to the free spending days of the past. There will always be a need for first and business class travel, and flexible conditions which inevitably carry a price premium. However, businesses look to balance the productivi-ty of their people and the cost of

travel, and many companies are implementing policies to mini-mise what I’ve heard termed “the industrial tourist.” New services designed for the consumer, such as wi-fi on planes and trains al-lowing data transfer and online conversations, are being adopted by businesses to make the time spent in travel more productive.

■ The internet is bringing huge benefits to the traveller. What new services are emerging, and could video conferencing and collaborative working cut down on the need for travel?

Destination and itinerary infor-mation seems to have become more prevalent via apps and there is emerging technology to allow travellers to modify their travel plans on the go in a much easier way.

As companies do more with fewer people, the cost avoidance is not always pure travel cost: more and more the time of the person attending the meeting. Video conferencing can provide a solid alternative to face-to-face meetings in the right circum-stances. In general, companies need to send their staff out to win business and be with their clients in person, so there will always be a need to travel.

Nicola Lomas, Chairman, The Institute of Travel and Meetings

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF BUSINESS

TRAVEL

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

CHANGING TRENDSNew technology has made working on the move easier with wi-fi now accessible at many airports and on certain airlines and trainsPHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

NEWS

How are mobile working, the rise of rail and increasing security concerns impacting

the way we travel? Nicola Lomas, Chairman of the Institute of Travel and Meetings, examines the issues.


HS2 is essential for the country’s future prosperity, an influential committee of MPs has found.

The Commons Transport Com-mittee even wants the whole project, with lines to both the North East and North West to be constructed at the same time as the currently planned first phase to Birmingham. If their sugges-tion is adopted, the whole line would be completed by 2026.

The committee said that the proj-ect should cost signifi cantly less than £50 billion, which includes large contingency estimates.

According to the commit-tee’s report: “The Department for Transport’s communications about HS2 should emphasise that the estimated cost is £28 billion, not £50 billion, and that cost increases to date have large-ly been due to the decision to undertake more tunnelling and other work to mitigate the im-pact of the project on people liv-ing near the route.”

HS2 would slash more than half an hour off the journey time between London and Birming-ham, and an hour off the time to Manchester.

But supporters of the project say that the most important fea-ture is not the speed but the ca-pacity. The new trains would take pressure off the existing rail net-work which is under acute pres-sure as passenger numbers rise relentlessly. It could also help al-leviate traffic problems on the motorways.

The Transport Secretary, Pat-rick McLoughlin, said HS2 would be a “heart bypass for the clogged arteries of our transport system We therefore welcome the Trans-port Committee’s conclusion that the new North-South rail-way is the best long-term solu-tion to increasing capacity and that alternative proposals would simply not cope with the pre-dicted increase in demand.”

MPs give green light to high speed train plan

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

High Speed 2 (HS2), Britain’s bullet train connecting London to the North, is being fought bitterly. Is the project really going to get built?


Traditionally, travel managers have been regarded by their travellers as the Abominable Nomen. No, you can’t travel first class. No, you can’t stay in your favourite hotel. And no, we won’t pay for you to take your clients to that horrible nightclub. That is changing.

Business travellers nowadays are venturing far beyond the con-fines of the developed world, vis-iting factories in remote areas of Asia and South America that would have been accessible only by mountain track just a few dec-ades ago. At the same time, the law has changed to impose on their employers a much strong-er duty of care for their travelling employees.

The result has been to trans-form the role of the travel manag-er into someone who cares for the safety and wellbeing of the trav-ellers, in addition to their roles as travel arrangers and facilitators and controllers of costs.

The financial crash was the time that everything changed, accord-ing to Gill Upton, Editor of The Business Travel Magazine. “Every-thing changed in 2008/9,” she says. “Travel managers have had to find

new ways to save money, but with-out impinging on the duty of care.”

Ironically, most bankers still travel first class and stay in five star hotels because their travel is

funded not by their employers but by the clients. It is the rest of us who are economising.

But the new hair-shirt travel re-gime is proving to be less horrible than many expected.

“The shock has not been too great because budget hotels have come on in leaps and bounds, of-fering all the basics at very rea-sonable costs,” Upton says. “Trav-ellers have realised that all you really need is a bed, a power shower, a kettle and free wireless internet access.”

After all, on tightly-packed trips you never got the opportu-nity to use the three restaurants, the sky lounge, the spa and all the other facilities of a five star hotel, so why pay extra?

Airlines have also adapted to the new environment“Economy class is much bet-ter than it was, and preallocat-ed seating has made things a lot better because you don’t have to queue with the bucket-and-spade mob,” Upton points out. “The on-ly thing people miss is the leg room, and that is not a great loss on short-haul flights.”

The travel manager’s role has also changed with legislation on duty of care, culminating the

Corporate Manslaughter Act, un-der which firms can be very heav-ily fined and executives jailed if employees die as a result of irre-sponsible travel plans.

As a result, travel managers have to check on hotels, ensuring stan-dards of security, hygiene and food safety are up to scratch. The safety record of airlines have to be scru-tinised. Plans have to be made for evacuation if the worst occurs, and a paper trail has to be established to record every decision for any fu-ture investigators.

“These requirements are bring-ing travel managers much closer to human resources, IT, finance and procurement,” Upton points out.

The role of the travel manager is set to change again as the upcom-ing generation rises to manage-ment level, Upton believes.

“The millennials are about to take control,” Upton says. “They want control and freedom, all on their mobiles, and they have not a care at all about data privacy.”

It looks as if the life of a travel manager is going to be filled with interest for the foreseeable future.

Gill Upton, EDITOR, THE

BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE

“Budget hotels have come on in leaps and bounds, offering all the basics at very reasonable costs”

INSPIRATION

TOP TIPS FOR TRAVEL MANAGERS

Economy class travellers get first class care

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

BUDGET TRAVELLERBusiness travel on a budget is becoming more comfortable as economy class hotels and transport raise their game PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

TOP TIPS FOR TRAVELLERS

■ Expand into managing meetings: The savings on travel are almost exhausted, but you can make big savings bringing your professional skills to organising office meetings.

■ Get an understanding of Big Data: Knowledge is power, and big data provides unique insights.

■ Communicate with other stakeholders, including procurement, finance, HR and IT.

■ Get a handle on changing demographics: the millennials are coming!

■ Keep to the programme! Your Travel manager has negotiated deals with suppliers that not only save your employer money but that also ensure your safety. The cheaper deal you found may place you in a dodgy part of town, use more carbon or take longer.

■ If your travel trip is not revenue-producing then always consider taking the meeting virtually, with a conference call or utilising telepresence, for example.

■ On revenue-producing trips, consider length of trip as well as the number of travellers in order to cut costs. Changing the time of day the meeting is held may affect a less expensive train or air journey or eradicate the need for an overnight stay, for example.

■ Don’t resist change but embrace it! Your employer is making changes to the way you travel to benefit you and ensure your wellbeing.

Keeping the traveller happy and comfortable whilst sticking to tight budgets and ensuring the travellers’ safety — the role of the travel manager is a difficult one. Gill Upton, Editor, The Business Travel Magazine, offers her top tips to the travel manager and the traveller.


■ The foreign business trip is about to start. The work schedule is all sorted and the meetings confirmed. The clothes and wash bag are packed. The car to the airport booked, hotel and country reviews have been read. The smart phone has all the latest apps and its charger has been successfully recovered from the kid’s bedroom.

But does the same amount of thought go into preparing to stay safe and healthy whilst working overseas?

Time was when an energetic sales rep or procurement guy could just hop on a plane and go into the bush without their employer’s travel manager having to worry too much. After all, they are grown-up people

and can be expected to look after themselves, can’t they?

No longer. Employee protection legislation now puts more respon-sibility for health and safety fi rmly on the employer. They have a duty of care to their workers.

But the workers also have to do their bit. It has to be about so much more than either employer or em-ployee having a quick look at the Foreign Offi ce website to check that he destination is not actually in a state of civil war.

Managing riskThe unstoppable rise of globalisa-tion is sending business people to the most remote spots on earth to sell products, talk to suppliers and man-age production. Often, they go into the unknown without proper sup-port, endangering both themselves and the projects they are working on.

These days, detailed research on the area in question is needed, says Wendy Stachowiak, Director Global Travel Partnerships at global medi-cal and travel risk assistance provid-er, International SOS:

“It is not enough to know about

a country in general, because every part of the world has its dodgy areas where apparently wealthy strangers are at risk from robbery, violence or even kidnapping. And even safe and secure countries with good reputa-tions can harbour life-threatening dangers to health,” she says.

Training is also vital to ensure travellers are aware of hidden risks, Stachowiak says. “We all do silly things without thinking. How many of us come out of the arrivals lounge and just follow the guy brandishing the bit of cardboard with our name on it, assuming he is the real driver? It is always a good idea to ask a cou-ple of questions just to establish he is legitimate.”

Health issues“Any traveller on medication should pack enough for at least twice as long as the duration of the trip, and carry

a prescription and doctor’s letter for additional supplies. Local pharma-cies may not stock the drug, or may not supply it without prescription,” Stachowiak advises.

“Which fl oor of the hotel are the safest rooms on? Why might you al-ways have to stick to sparkling water? Did you know there was a riot near your hotel the other day?”

These are the questions we need to be asking — workers and bosses together.

For businesses across the globe, 2014 will be a year of continued ex-pansion, exploration and entrepre-neurial spirit. Travelling to remote areas can be profi table and reward-ing. And with proper training, prepa-ration and backup, it can be safe too.

Worldwide reach Human touch

International SOS is the world’s leading medical & travel security risk services company, operating from over 700 sites in 76 countries. We offer clients medical and travel security advice, preventative programmes with in-country expertise and emergency assistance during critical illness, accident or civil unrest. Our service also extends to both Governments and Non-Government Organisations whom we help to achieve their Duty of Care responsibilities.

To find out more, please visit www.internationalsos.com

Protecting your people is our priority and this is what makes us the world’s leading medical and travel security risk services company today.

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1,200 physiciansEXPERTISE: Immediate access to experts with extensive experience in all fields of medicine coupled with a thorough knowledge of the local environment & healthcare system

35 ClinicsCARE: Access to a vast network of accredited clinics practising international standards of medicine - even in developing countries

76,000 accredited providersRESPECT: A network of accredited healthcare, aviation & security providers, ensuring we provide you with high standards of care in the air and on the ground

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

Wendy Stachowiak, Director Global Travel Partnerships, International SOS Assistance

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Staying safe when travelling on business


The position is made even more complex by the taxman who per-sists in viewing rewards pro-grammes as benefits in kind that must be declared and taxed.

In the new atmosphere of aus-terity, the travel industry is try-ing to offer benefits to both sides, says David Chapple, Event Director at Centaur Exhibitions, organisers of the Business Travel Show. “Lots of rewards programmes seek to

reward both the company and the individual, offering things like last minute or last room availabil-ity to the company, and upgrades, free wifi, car parking or access to lounges to the individual.”

Frequent flyerThe biggest rewards are obtained by regular travellers, Chapple explains. It is not the one-off round-the-world trip that yields the best payback, but going every week from Heathrow to Brussels and staying the night. Both the airline and the hotel will work very hard to keep that business — indeed, rewards programmes are designed specifically to generate repeat bookings.

Loyal customerThe other major factor in get-ting the best out of reward pro-grammes is the volume of busi-ness, obviously. Less obviously, the volume has to be concentrat-ed to get the attention of the rele-vant manager. “Say you are spend-ing £20,000 a year with an interna-tional hotel chain,” Chapple says.

“If you spend it all at one hotel, the manager will be very keen to do business. If you spend it across the whole chain, they couldn’t give a monkeys about you. You have to spend about a million be-fore they get out of bed.”

Negotiating is keySavings can also be made by ex-ploiting the way booking agents are paid. “If you have a lot of hotel bookings in lots of different plac-es, the hotel booking agent will pay you part of the commission they get from the hotel if you are a savvy negotiator,” Chapple says.

The key to the biggest savings is, as so often in business, sitting down and negotiating. “It is like all of these things, if you look a little bit closer at how you spend it and who you are spending it with, you can save between 10 and 20 per cent of your travel bud-get just by being a bit smarter.”

David Chappel, Event Director at

Centaur Exhibitions, organisers of

the Business Travel Show

“If you have a lot of hotel bookings in lots of different places, the hotel booking agent will pay you part of the commission they get from the hotel if you are a savvy negotiator”

NEWS

THE NEW WORLD

Sharing the Spoils — who gets the air miles?Rewards programmes used to be a major bone of contention between business travellers and their employers. The travellers felt they had been put through the pain of the trip, so they should get the rewards. The employers, on the other hand, regarded the reward as part of the cost saving that they are entitled to. It is one of the most contentious issues in any company where people travel a lot, and feelings can run high.

Where East meets West — Arabia’s Gulf StatesThe map of the world’s air routes is morphing from a network of lines joining the capitals of the developed world, into something looking more like a series of spider’s webs centred on a few hubs covering each region of the globe.

Most of the hubs are well estab-lished — Heathrow, Paris, Schipol — but one is new and rather unex-pected — the Persian Gulf. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha on the north-ern coast of the Arabian peninsu-lar are vying for a slice of the traf-fic from Europe to south and south east Asia, Africa and Australasia.

All three states have invested huge sums in new airport build-ings — Dubai’s is as long as 24 foot-ball fields. And they have also spent lavishly on aircraft, with Gulf carri-er having placed more than a third of the orders for the advanced long-range Boeing 777 and Airbus A380.

This enormous expansion has been funded by oil money, part of their master plan to develop local economies that will survive when the oil runs out. But the success of the policy depends not on funding but geography.

The location happens to lie with-in an eight-hour flight of two-thirds of the world’s population. British business travellers bound almost anywhere except the Americas find themselves changing flights in the Persian Gulf more and more.

And the traffic is not in one di-rection — the Gulf is also benefit-ing from the rise of affluent mid-dle classes in India and China who want to travel and can now afford to do it.

In the past five years, the number of passengers travelling through Emirates’ base at Dubai Interna-tional Airport every year has risen from 28.8 million to 51 million, a 77 per cent increase. More passen-gers now pass through Dubai than through New York’s JFK.

And there is more to come. The government-owned airlines of the Gulf are eyeing local airlines else-where in the region. India’s Jet Air-ways has completed the sale of a 24 per cent stake to Abu Dhabi’s Etihad has just bought a 24 per cent stake in India’s ailing Jet Airways, exploiting the newly relaxed aviation owner-ship rules in the sub-continent.

The Persian Gulf is set to become not just a transit hub, but a power in world aviation.

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

CHRIS PARTRIDGE

[email protected]

GAIN REWARDSAs a frequent traveller, it’s important to know how you can benefit — from cash rewards to travel upgrades PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

S AVA S M I L A N O . C O M

Photo: Save The Children.

THANK YOU Find out how your donations are making a real difference. Visit dec.org.uk

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