A recent article from The Business Travel Magazine claims that Travel Buyers are finding it harder to convince their travellers about the value of using a Travel Management Companies (TMCs)…

The article paints a bleak picture of an industry struggling to keep pace with a fast-moving business travel environment. It claims that TMCs are often slow to react to retailing changes (such as the adoption of NDC) and lack the flexibility needed to meet evolving consumer demands.

TMCs are struggling to prove their value to clients, the author suggests, with restricted access to content and outdated travel technology shouldering much of the blame.

However, at Gray Dawes, we respectfully and heartily disagree… 

After all, not all TMCs are created equally. Tarring everyone with the same brush only serves to devalue the brilliant work and innovative thinking that organisations such as ours bring to the industry and the benefits that a High Touch, High Tech, High Content service delivery model brings to corporate travel clients.

In this article, we take a deeper look at the “Value Proposition” piece from the Business Travel Magazine and demonstrate how we are genuinely doing things differently.

Gray Dawes is here to help you better your experience by running through each element of the RFP process to enable you to partner with a Travel Management Company (TMC) that is ideal for your business.

Business travel touches many people across a business. As such we would recommend meeting your internal subject matter experts to understand how the programme affects them and how the TMC can bring more value to their teams:

• Key bookers
• Key travellers
• A member of HR
• A member of the Finance team
• A member of the IT team

Their experience and knowledge of departmental processes (e.g. invoicing and payment for Finance) will be key when building question sets that bring palpable responses.

Creating your own shortlist can be done easily if you know where to look and the best places to start would be:

• The profiles of the UK’s top 50 TMCs: https://www.businesstravelnewseurope.com/Europes-leading-TMCs

• Members of the British Travel Association (BTA): https://www.thebta.org.uk/bta-members 

• Institute of Travel Management: https://www.itm.org.uk/ 

If you hold a good relationship with a TMC and have reviewed their standing in the UK market, it would be worth including them on your shortlist.

Within an RFP, structure is everything. We would suggest building a list of chapters of the key areas for your travel management programme and working from there. For example:

• Executive Summary
• Online Booking Tool – Content available, functionality, mobile app compatible
• Service Delivery Team – Size of team, location, experience, SLAs
• Account Management – How will they drive performance, experience
• Reporting – Dashboard availability, live reporting capability, frequency of reports
• Implementation – Time frames, key personnel
• Added Value – Cost savings, additional services, tangible and intangible benefits
• Commercials – Compliant and premium models

Take the information gained from your internal review and reach out to your key bookers, their insight into the day to day operations will enable you to gather a list of salient questions to really tailor the RFP to your business.

As part of your early engagement with your shortlist of suppliers you should inform them when the RFP will be released, giving them the opportunity to research your business, plan the necessary internal meeting to discuss the bid and build it within their prospect pipeline.

Within your RFP documents you should dedicate a section that details all of the key dates within a table so that it is clear and all in one place for the reader. For example:

Comparing suppliers is a challenging exercise, there will be numerous responses written and presented in different ways.

One method to take the strain from your evaluation is to create a weightings matrix which can be shared with the suppliers within the RFP document. A weightings matrix simply breaks down what is important to your business and the areas to focus on for the supplier. From a client side it will present a ‘scoring card’ for the evaluation process.

Scoring:

0-5%: Supplier meets some of the requested criteria

6-14%: Supplier compliant

15-20%: Supplier displays excellent understanding of our requirements

Once a bid has been submitted and evaluated you are ready to conduct the presentation stage. This can be carried out at your office, the supplier’s proposed operations centre or in this current climate over WebEx / Zoom.

It would be beneficial to share an agenda of topics that you want to be covered – this provides a ‘yard stick’ for you to evaluate the suppliers. If there is no agenda, your ability to score the presentations will become near impossible.

Now time to share some good news! Once you have informed the TMC they have been successful they will take the reigns for you and begin the transition and implementation process until the go live date.

And they booked travel happily ever after….

YourTrip, our powerful online booking tool, offers so much more than just the plane and train services you’re used to…

In fact, YourTrip has the capability of handling almost every part of your trip, from booking hotels, car hire, ground transport, EU rail, Amtrak and car parking – all within the app and all compliant to your company’s travel policy. Ensure you’re fully covered for your next trip with YourTrip.

In this podcast, our own Gray Dawes COO Dave Bishop discusses the question of online versus offline with Adrian Witschi (global lead travel, expense and card programs at Mondelez), Carlos Delatorre (chief revenue officer of TripActions) and Leigh Cowlishaw (global supplier partnership director of the Advantage Travel Group).

To help you navigate the changes of business travel, we’ve created the brand-new Traveller Toolkit. This invaluable online resource is packed full of easy-to-use guides and checklists for every stage of every journey. We detail exactly what you need to know and do before, during and after your trip.

You’ll also find innovative and interactive virtual trips, which walk you through each step of  being at the airport, on the train and in the hotel. You can even check the travel restrictions and health status of your destination with our comprehensive COVID-19 Country Tracker, updated five times daily to ensure you have the very latest information to help keep you and your travellers safe.

Travel is changing. But with common sense and a good TMC behind you, travellers should have the confidence to once again take to the skies. It’ll soon be business as (un)usual.