The advice came from Dominic O’Regan, solutions consultancy director at KDS, which supplies travel and expense management systems.
He urged organisations to ensure total trip costs are calculated correctly and weighed against the benefit of the travel.
‘Right now, when the economic pressures on every business are so intense, it is more important than ever before to avoid unnecessary – and unnecessarily expensive – travel,’ said O’Regan.
‘The first step in that process is to know the likely total cost of a trip before the travel plans are approved.
‘Are you going to spend more travelling than you will generate when you arrive?
‘I cannot stress enough the importance of ROI in modern business travel.
‘Monitoring costs such as flights and hotels can be a straightforward task but, all too often, factors such as travel management company (TMC) fees, lodge card spend and incidentals can be overlooked or forgotten.
‘You only realise the actual total cost of the trip after the event, by when it’s too late to do anything. Perhaps you never truly realise the total trip cost at all.
‘If you want to stop wasting money, you need comprehensive, reliable, easily-accessible and well-presented data from the very start of the travel management process.’
BTM started yesterday and concludes today, at ExCeL in London.
Recent BTM news from e-tid.com:
RailGo appoints Amex (16/06/2010)
BTM survey highlights uptake of mobile apps (16/06/2010)
Strong support for BTM 2010 (30/04/2010)
BTM announces speakers (21/04/2010)
BTM introduces mobile meeting technology (26/03/2010)
Maverick sessions return at BTM (05/03/2010)
BTM doubles meetings schedule (19/02/2010)
See also:
New website for KDS (07/06/2010)
KDS taps HRS content (23/10/2009)
KDS launches Express service (01/10/2008)