When corporate travellers go rogue

More are using online portals to plan their trip and that comes with some downsides

enneth Diederich, who travelled more than 68,000 miles (109,000km) last year and spent 192 nights in hotels, books his hotel rooms on Priceline.com, on Kayak.com or directly on hotel websites. He tends to book his airline seats on American Airlines’ site.

“I use every tool available online, booking my own travel even though I could use our corporate travel agent,” said Diederich, who is corporate executive chef of research and development for American Dining Creations of Syracuse, New York. Diederich, who is also an ice carver and executive director of the National Ice Carving Association, added that he preferred booking his own travel. “It’s all about the points.” He is among those known in the corporate travel world as “rogue travellers” — those who book on their own. They are used to searching for the best fares, staying in unusual places and collecting reward points.

Yet companies want to control travel costs. And his company policy, like others, requires employees to let the corporation know where they are in case of an emergency, a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. Diederich’s answer to that is simply, “I just forward the confirmation to the corporate travel agent.”

That way, he travels how he wants to, he is reimbursed for his expenses and his company knows where he is.

Less control for companies

A study in July by Phocuswright, a travel industry research firm, The US Business Traveller: Debunking Common Myths About Corporate Travel, said that “managed travel implies control over the traveller’s actions.” But it found that business travellers were increasingly using their phones to plan and book their trips — outside their companies’ travel tools.

Most business travellers still book through the corporate booking tool or corporate travel agent, the study found. More than half said they always did, and a third said they usually did, while the rest may book directly with an airline, hotel or rental car company.

“Fifty to 60 per cent of hotel bookings always existed outside,” said John M. Rose, the chief operating officer of iJet International. “People of different generations are travelling who are used to everything being at their fingertips.” Compliance, he added, “is hard to mandate.” Travel management companies believe the direct booking trend is here to stay. “Everybody has a policy, every company. But the traveller says, “I found a lower rate”,” said Greeley Koch, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. Some corporate travel managers require business travellers who make their own arrangements to alert

the corporate travel department or the travel management company with an email “so somebody knows where their people are and are they booking in a compliant way from a duty-of-care standpoint,” said Michael Steiner, executive vice-president of Ovation Travel Group.

“Some companies say if you book direct, you are not going to be reimbursed. If you report it, you will be reimbursed.”

More rules for larger organisations

Booking patterns vary depending on travellers’ habits and the tech tools they use. Larger corporations typically have more rules than smaller ones.

Rebecca Nittolo travels for business a couple of days a week for three of the four weeks each month.

An associate director of sales for Education and Training Systems International in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, she said she mostly booked her flights and hotels through the company travel agent.

When she is on business in Chicago, she books directly with a contact at the Deer Path Inn in Lake Forest, Illinois. “I work at a small company,” Nittolo said. “They always know where I am. I’m always in communication with my team.”

Some corporations keep track of their travellers with Concur TripLink, which allows travel managers to capture data from every booking channel — flights, hotels and ground transportation — regardless of how business travellers have booked. There are also mobile apps that allow employees to check in with their company when they’ve landed, Rose, of iJet International, said.

The three issues that business travellers are most likely to encounter are petty crime and theft, medical and health situations, and bad weather. Still, travel risk depends on where travellers are headed, the profile of the travellers, and where they are meeting and with whom, said Erin Wilk, global travel safety and security manager for Facebook and chairman of the Global Business Travel Association’s risk committee.

Companies are also taking on more of a role in making sure their employees are safe. “We’re starting to see now a shift,” said Koch, of the corporate travel executives association, “an emphasis on duty of care, the corporation’s responsibility to its employees.”

If a corporate traveller is headed to a remote area in Nigeria or the Middle East or other level four or five areas (with five the highest security risk), Rose said, a corporate travel manager might be thinking: “Wait a second. We didn’t know where you were because you were not following the protocols.”

The safety and security landscape has changed. Since a string of terrorist attacks throughout the world, including some in the US, senior corporate executives and corporate travel managers are increasingly concerned with tracking their travellers throughout the globe.

“Since the November 2015 Paris attacks, we have seen a 30 per cent increase in North American clients adding travel tracking to their travel risk mitigation programme,” said Matthew Bradley, regional security director in the Americas for International SOS and Control Risks.

William Besse, vice-president in the consulting, investigations and international division at Andrews International, noted that it had become “more and more difficult to predict where violence will take place in the world,” adding, “It can take place anywhere, anyplace, anytime.”

In the event of an emergency, security companies can alert employees to what is happening on their next stop by text message, phone call or email. They can set up two-way communication to employees’ smartphones to ensure they are safe.

While the risk of a terrorist or “lone wolf” attack is very small, there is growing concern among corporate travellers as well. According to a report this year from the Global Business Travel Association Foundation, Risk on the Road: Safety and Security Concerns Lead to Traveller Behaviour Change, business travellers “view terrorism as the greatest safety risk they face on the road.”

Close to half ranked it as their greatest concern when travelling for business, much higher than the more likely risks of street crime, theft and outbreaks of disease. Business travellers, Wilk, of Facebook, said, cannot expect the “flexibility and the options they have in their personal travel.”

corporate executive chef of research and development for American Dining Creations