Talking Corporate Travel…what’s next?

3 July, 2017

The Blue Swan Daily has its finger on the pulse and its ear to the ground, ready to bring you the latest instalment of Talking Corporate Travel. We have caught up with the industry leaders to find out what is happening in the world of corporate travel and what trends we can expect for the future.

Virgin Australia former group executive John Thomas

The large corporate is a tough market, most large organisations in Australia have taken a real intense look at their travel budgets. Most of them now have a travel policy which is best fare of the day, which in most cases, actually helps us, as we are cheaper than the competition. A corporate travel policy that imposes lowest fare of the day helps us.

The growth is really in the small to medium enterprise market. It has been a market which we have had a focus on from the early days of Virgin Blue, which was very much for those small to medium enterprise markets. We are actually about to relaunch our platform called, Accelerate. We are lining up to capture the growth in that market.

Scoot GM Australia Jared Simcox

We are trade friendly, we cooperate with the agents and we do have some frequent corporate clients, but at the moment the opportunity for us to grow is huge. We would like corporates to see value in our unbundled product. We would like them to see value in services like WiFi and have the ability to choose what matters to them.

FCM Travel Solutions commercial director Robert Dell

One of the biggest impactors we are seeing at the moment is the introduction of Gen X and Gen Y coming into the workforce. Typically what the customer is now seeking from their corporate travel company is what they have been used to booking online for their holidays, therefore as TMCs we are having to reinvent how we deliver content to those travellers and make it as easy and seamless. It really is about the customer experience and how we make that happen, with a very big focus on mobility. The typical workforce is now very much more mobile, you have hot desking in office, there's no fixed form of abode as it were and people are leaning towards laptops and tablets. As a TMC we are required to increasingly accommodate those sorts of demands from customers.

Japan Airlines supervisor, passenger marketing and international affairs - Europe, Middle East and Africa Mark Lucas

Japan Airlines is very much a premium airline and for that reason we can focus on the corporate market as our service and the quality of our product is a perfect fit for those travellers. The key message we like to communicate to the corporate traveller is our ability to replicate the quintessential Japanese style of service. Customers can experience this service before even arriving in Japan, something which differentiates us from other carriers.

Serko CEO Darrin Grafton

We are really starting to see that organisations are trying to get real savings around moving from a travel coordinator centric market to a traveller centric market. Around 80% of Australia's travel is still done through a travel coordinator led environment and to get the next level of savings we need to be attaching how the traveller is actually travelling when they are on the road, and how they are interacting with different services like Uber and taxis. We can get about another 8% shift in total savings by shifting that programme downwards. We see this being a progressive move over the next 18 months but it is one of the biggest stats that we are seeing of where we can get the next level of savings.

To hear more - much more - from leaders and experts like this, join us at the CAPA-ACTE Perth Aviation and Corporate Travel Summit at the Mercure Perth on 4-Jul-2017. Register your attendance here.