Between managing the day-to-day operations of travel procurement, maintaining best-in-class programs, ensuring policy compliance and the responsibilities of data management, the travel manager’s role is multifaceted. For decades, travel managers have struggled to aggregate travel data because of its many storage points. After collecting the data, formatting inconsistencies and static tools make accurate reporting virtually impossible.
Travel managers rely on a variety of data sources today, including:
- Travel Management Companies (TMCs)
- Travel supplier “for biz” portals
- Credit card providers
- Employee expense reports
TMC reports provide pre-trip itinerary details, changes, and cancellations. However, TMCs only capture compliant bookings — those booked directly through your designated TMC. Any bookings outside of your preferred TMC channel are “leakage” and are, in essence, invisible. Leakage data only becomes known during post-trip reporting through credit card data and employee expense reports, but it’s rarely comprehensive and impedes duty of care.
What is Pre-Trip Booking Data
Pre-trip booking data allows a company to collect and view GSD data to assess any potential risks against current company policies. Pre-trip travel data also creates endless opportunities for corporate travel managers to connect with travelers prior to departure, ensuring bookings are compliant and identifying missed savings opportunities before lift-off.
Pre-Trip Data Analytics
Fortunately, accessing a comprehensive, pre-trip view of your travel program has never been easier. With Traxo’s ability to collect, parse and normalize travel data from all booking sources, you’re free to focus on program strategy, compliance, cost-savings initiatives and duty of care without stressing over data aggregation.
Key areas supported by pre-trip data include:
- Improved program compliance
- Informed policy modifications
- Comprehensive duty of care coverage
- Streamlined and efficient data reporting capture
- Visibility into off-channel bookings, otherwise known as program leakage
- Easy, continuous travel program auditing
- Data-backed supplier negotiations
Wave Goodbye to Manual Report Consolidation
Traxo’s pre-trip data capture enables you to abandon manual data gathering and optimize your workflow. Traxo’s reporting capabilities provide visibility into all your company’s bookings, regardless of the original booking source by capturing and parsing bookings made through TMCs, OTA’s and supplier sites. Consider Traxo your travel data safety net. With complete data capture at your fingertips, you’ll never miss out on traveler itineraries, giving you the confidence you need when an emergency strikes.
Continually Audit Your Travel Program
In the past, a comprehensive travel program audit was cumbersome — something that happened once or twice a year, if you could find the time. With Traxo in place, your travel program is continually audited in the background. This instant auditing allows you to refocus your time and capitalize on travel management strategies supported by complete data.
Travel Management Enabled by Continuous Program Auditing:
- Audit your preferred supplier rates across multiple channels to ensure your contractual rates and amenities are realized. This actionable data allows you to engage with suppliers who are not meeting their contractual obligations.
- Easily identify travelers who are booking outside of your preferred channels and audit your program compliance. You can utilize this information for training and re-education efforts amongst your travelers. With Traxo, you can offer your travelers choice in their preferred booking method without sacrificing your program’s integrity.
- Identify and course-correct traveler behavior before the trip occurs, and the spend is irreversible. With pre-trip data readily available, you have an opportunity to connect with the traveler before departure and suggest itinerary adjustments to meet your travel policy guidelines. Proactive itinerary changes ensure that you realize any potential cost savings opportunities that are available to your travelers.
- Identify common patterns in traveler behavior and utilize the data to negotiate with new travel suppliers. The addition of new travel suppliers into your preferred program can sometimes be trial and error. When reviewing Traxo data, you have an opportunity to connect with your travelers and get a good pulse on their experience with suppliers who are not currently in your preferred program. Now, you can easily introduce suppliers that your travelers already love and trust today, making change management hurdles almost non-existent.
- Make your policies traveler-centric, without the barrier of using one preferred channel (traditionally a designated TMC). We know travelers want freedom of choice, and travel is extremely personal. By granting your travelers freedom to choose how they book travel — while knowing that your data integrity is safe — you create a win-win scenario.
- Quickly determine who is traveling and their whereabouts when faced with a crisis. Traxo provides you with 24/7 visibility into all traveler itineraries regardless of their booking source, eliminating any data gaps and ensuring all your travelers receive proper duty of care. Traxo can even syndicate booking data to your preferred duty of care providers.
- By analyzing Traxo’s complete, pre-trip data, you may reveal hidden savings such as opportunities for supplier re-negotiation. As you identify new suppliers in your leakage data, you can identify traveler-choice suppliers during your next RFP.
Data Visibility Makes Travel Management More Efficient and Effective
With increased visibility into your program through comprehensive data analytics, you become empowered to make decisions more efficiently and effectively. Heightened awareness provides you with the leverage you need to obtain approval for strategic policy and procedural changes that impact your organization's bottom line. Traxo’s complete data will safeguard any policy changes you implement.
Connect with Traxo to Learn About Travel Pre-Trip Data Visibility
Traxo is the global leader in real-time corporate travel data capture and intelligence. With agency agnostic pre-trip data capture technology at your fingertips, companies can seamlessly capture omnichannel spend and eliminate the travel data gaps the industry has tolerated for years. Contact us today to receive your corporate travel audit.