September 2008 - The Internet's rants and raves scare some corporate travel buyers away from creating internal Web sites for traveler-generated content and networking, but service providers, consultants and early-adopting buyers offer compelling arguments for seeking and enabling traveler opinions.
Among the greatest fears is how negative reviews could impact preferred supplier support. Who is going to stay at a preferred property if an employee slams its services on a Web site accessible to all company travelers?
However, "the strong complainers are the minority and usually recognized as such," said Travel Tech Consulting president Norm Rose, who moderated two related discussions at the National Business Travel Association convention in July. "In addition, the process of using these applications helps expose issues you may not even be aware of."
According to Jean-Pierre Remy--president of Egencia, Expedia's corporate travel
agency that offers traveler reviews of hotels and airline seating--"Like it or not, travelers will search for better advice. There's nothing you can do to prevent that. Don't deny it. Don't try to close the door. Learn from them
and their feedback, and build the feedback loop to take advantage of this information and refine your travel program and policy."
John Linss, president and CEO of networking tech provider CoreSpeed, said:
"It's better to know they're talking about these things and be able to respond than to not know about it and have a revolution on your hands."
Travelers already are using publicly accessible networking sites (see chart), but it would be impossible for a travel buyer to monitor them there. While jumping into an internal forum to correct misunderstandings or promote preferred vendors is feasible, it's also a sort of fire fighting that strategic buyers have tried to leave behind.
| LinkedIn |
61% |
|
| Wikipedia |
47% |
|
| Facebook |
46% |
|
| YouTube |
30% |
|
| TripAdvisor |
30% |
|
| Flickr |
26% |
|
| Plaxo |
25% |
|
| Twitter |
21% |
|
| FlyerTalk |
12% |
|
| MySpace |
10% |
|
Source: TripIt June 2008 survey of 479 travelers taking eight or more trips per year
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|
"Although I want to hear people's feedback, do I have the resources to manage it every time they complain, and am I putting myself in a reactionary position?" asked CapitalOne senior manager for corporate travel and expense management Tamara Jones, during an Association of Corporate Travel Executives forum earlier this year. "If I open this opportunity up, am I opening a can of worms that I can neither close nor manage, and then lose my credibility as an expert?"
Cisco Systems global travel and meetings business process manager Carlos Almendros said internal travel forums implemented this year have not hurt manager productivity or expert status. "It allows us to let suppliers know what travelers are saying," he said. "For many years, employees complained to the travel management companies, but felt their voices weren't heard."
Members of Cisco's global travel team moderate forums based on their responsibilities, including policy, airlines, hotels, data reporting, meetings and global security. "This allows us to listen to them and respond in real time," Almendros said, noting that managers are e-mailed with each new post so they don't have to randomly check the sites.
"Travelers are out there looking at third-party information," said travel manager Lyndsey Pomella of Philips Electronics, which in January created a part-time "communications and feedback" position and plans to create "a community for travel" with categories like Cisco's.
The Cisco forums got 200,000 hits between April and July, said Almendros, but
that's a corporation with 66,000 worldwide travelers in 80 countries. Would smaller scale generate meaningful feedback and, if not, should firms participate in wider, multicompany forums? The vendor officials were split. Egencia's Remy and a TripIt executive supported greater scale, while Linss and Martin Stoll, president of social networking travel portal builder GoSeeTell Network, argued that even small communities are effective with healthy participation.
At any size, "employees can share information about suppliers, write reviews and find products recommended by colleagues," said Stoll. "How many business travelers just eat in the hotel because they don't know there's a cheaper alternative nearby?" He also pictured corporate buyers approaching hotel sales reps with stacks of reviews generated internally, "so it shifts power somewhat to the travel manager."
Other potential benefits include engaging employees who trust one another more than corporate or marketing messages. Online collaboration should not be undertaken lightly, though, as there may be privacy, legal and copyright issues with creating a place for criticism. Still, supporters suggested that negativity is less apparent in a closed network than the wider blogosphere. According to Stoll, the user name is likely tied to the corporate e-mail address, "so it lowers the threshold of how wild they will go." Almendros agreed, while Linss said: "It's almost self-regulating. Extreme opinions are identified as such."
