Guy Snelgar joined the Advantage Travel Partnership in the newly created role of global business travel director in June this year

Travelling for business is generally hard work; it always has been. For several years we¡¯ve been talking about the impact of travel on employees and how tough travel schedules ¨C and stringent travel policies ¨C translate into staff attrition.

And then came the pandemic, ushering in the dawn of hybrid working and prompting swathes of once regular business travellers to assess work/life balance. In turn, Covid-19 forced organisations to look much more closely at traveller wellbeing and review their duty of care policies. Who could travel? How long could they travel for? Are they getting enough rest? Where were they going?

Layer on top the increased urgency around meaningful sustainability policies and the financial pressures that many businesses find themselves under, and it¡¯s no wonder there¡¯s been a distinct shift in traveller behaviour. What's more, there¡¯s also the shadow of potential disruption hanging over business trips. It¡¯s not surprising that some employees are wary of travelling.

The one-day business trip is certainly under threat. From recent personal experience of ¡®first flight out, last flight back¡¯, my colleague and I ¨C with different itineraries but heading to the same meeting ¨C both had some sort of travel delay, either on the outbound flight, the return flight, or the train journey to the airport. It turned an already long and tiring day into a very long and slightly stressful one. I thought to myself: ¡®I won¡¯t be doing that again¡¯.

The need to mitigate travel-related stress and to prioritise personal wellbeing is going to impact how I, and many others, choose to travel. I live in London so I'm lucky enough to have a choice of airports to fly from and airlines to fly with. Historically, some booking tools presented?punctuality statistics alongside some flight options. Is this something travel bookers will start calling for again?

However, like 94 per cent of business travellers in a recent Egencia survey, I am happy to be travelling again ¨C to be meeting Advantage's TMC members, partners and colleagues face to face again, and to feel exactly how those meetings are really elevating those relationships.

How does effective corporate travel keep going with all of those factors? One answer is to 'travel less but travel better'. That means fewer, but longer and more productive trips, with a clear purpose ¨C perhaps focused on customer engagement, for example, rather than routine internal meetings.

TMCs must facilitate 'better' travel
While predictions about the return to pre-pandemic levels of travel vary greatly, one trend that does seem to be coming through in the data is that the average spend per trip is increasing, with more ancillaries included. This means more potential for the TMC to provide total trip management.

The TMC can and should be instrumental in driving this change in travel behaviour, starting with helping customers evolve new policies and controls to guide travellers towards more productive, sustainable and secure travel. The tools now exist to work with a wider range of suppliers and channels, bringing them together in a single door-to-door trip, and in doing so provide real visibility and analysis of the total cost of that trip.?

There are challenges here, of course. Trying to pull content from multiple sources into the agency workflow so that it can be managed, changed, paid for and reported in the way the corporate customer needs, can still be a bit of a minefield.

But isn¡¯t that a huge part of what companies want a TMC for? I have heard from many TMCs about how they are restructuring their teams, changing their booking technology and business models to really focus on the upsell of additional products ¨C but, crucially, the right products, offered at the right time.?

I believe this also presents an opportunity to find alternative ways to move the pricing model beyond the standard transaction fee model, towards one that really reflects the service, expertise and value a TMC brings.

Corporate travel behaviour may be changing, but with change comes another great opportunity for TMCs to demonstrate their positive value and, as business travel will always include some risk of disruption, the value of the human travel expert, available when things go awry, is clearly illustrated.