Masters Consider 'Corporate' Social Networking
The Beat - a business travel newsletter
2/20/08
The corporate travel community is taking a closer look at social networking and beginning to ask tough questions about how to implement it and what doing so would mean for travel management programs, their managers, travelers and suppliers.
There is consensus that business traveler participation in peer-to-peer communities is underway, and growth is inevitable. But where to take that next is largely unanswered. Who provides the technology and at what price? How much control should be placed on traveler discussions and feedback in a corporate context? What does it really do for corporate goals?
Thomson worldwide corporate travel manager Cindy Heston last spring told The Beat that her department was working with the firm's information technology group to create a user community to generate insight on such information as restaurant options or supplier performance. The company has since launched what Heston calls an interactive survey, in which traveler comments responding to "canned" questions are posted.
"What you're getting is information you wouldn't have otherwise," said Heston today during a panel discussion at The Masters Program. "What the travelers are telling us can affect supplier relationships, and they're voting anyway by their selections. I prefer to find out real-time rather than 60 days later that they don't like this property or that flight is always late. After 60 or 90 days, I may not be meeting market share [requirements in vendor contracts] and have to start asking people after the fact."
Yet, Thomson's social network is not as open as what consumer travelers have built using sites like TripAdvisor or IgoUgo. "I want controlled chaos," Heston said. "This is not something I want external people to have access to." Sometimes that goes for internal people, as well, although Heston's personal approval of comments before they are displayed to the broader travel population at Thomson requires more of her time.
How social networking fits into corporate travel's "typical command and control environment," as VibeAgent CEO and co-founder Adam Healy described it, may be the question of the year. Not everyone is comfortable with the implications.
"I would like to think all my suppliers are the best in the world, but unfortunately, the services they provide are not always," said Pfizer senior director of global travel Philip Dunphy. "I'd be very concerned [about free discussion], because I don't think every employee understands the full value proposition of what we're trying to do in travel management. Normally, I'm responding to someone who is not happy with what we're doing. If you open the environment up, and the dialogue is too open or broad to even try to digest, you can end up with thousands of opinions."
Certainly there are ways to quantify feedback based on polls and other means, and to minimize the day-to-day time spent administering discussions, but Dunphy's concern is not simply solved by technology.
"In these situations, many organizations are more afraid of what they're going to hear than taking that information and making it useful," said University of Texas intercollegiate athletics travel manager and National Business Travel Association president Kevin Maguire. "I'm not sure any traveler understands what a managed travel program really is, much less the bosses you report to."
McDonald's Corp. travel services director Bruce Miller speculated that social networking could support the education of travelers about managed programs. If "travelers are not familiar, [that] means it's incumbent on us to reeducate them, and this may be an avenue for that," said Miller. "The information we get can be useful, but it might also make us squirm because we're not comfortable with what it's telling us." Yet, Miller suggested such traveler insights could be introduced "meaningfully" into service-level agreements.
Sabre Travel Network and American Express Business travel today announced plans to launch a new social networking application in mid-2008, initially through the GetThere corporate booking tool. While Sabre is convinced that there is growing demand for such communities, Sabre Travel Network North America senior vice president Chris Kroeger also said the company knows neither how much dialogue control corporate and agency clients will want to have, nor how to price the offering. Consumer social networks make money with advertising.
"We're evaluating pricing," said Kroeger. "Is an ad-based model a business-to-business application? Ad models are probably not as applicable. Is it a user license? We're working on how all that looks." Asked whether Sabre is embarking on an experiment to find out how one can make money in "corporate" social networking, he said, "Yes, I think so."
Implemented last year for an internal Sabre community, the initiative--which Sabre is calling cubeless--will enable sharing of "knowledge and expertise" such as "advice and recommendations about travel" among "people within their company that do what they do, have the same travel policies and have been in the same locations. ... It can be anything from finding out about services to help support their business trip in a location others have been to, to what nearby restaurants are open all night for a quick bite to verifying that a hotel they want to stay in has dependable, fast, wireless Internet access and a gym that is open early in the morning."
American Express Business Travel last year stated an interest in building its social networking capabilities during 2008, and an Amex spokesperson said the cooperative effort with GetThere would be one of many. The spokesperson did not say whether any other initiatives would use corporate booking tools, but two buyers speaking at today's event seemed to agree that the corporate booking tool is the place for communities to "live."
"You're in the process of making a reservation, the information is queued up and you can add content or a review--that is, to me, the ultimate," said Heston. "The e-booking tool is where this would be best placed."
According to Maguire, "I don't think we're close to that yet, but that's where we need to be."
Concur, TRX and Rearden Commerce also are dabbling with different aspects of social networking. Meanwhile, networks conceived for consumer travel, like Healy's VibeAgent, could also apply. "We're exploring opportunities in corporate travel," Healy said, while advocating as open an approach as businesses can stomach. "Travelers are already talking to each other about suppliers, but the conversation will move from the water cooler to the Web." Adding more structure to create "measurable" information is clearly a possibility, Healy said, but how corporations and other businesses can support the broad, open dialogues so fundamental to the most successful social networks remains a matter for debate. "Companies deciding on these closed platforms" should ask whether they "get the necessary scale to provide value to the next traveler," Healy added. "I think you need the scale and to go as broad as possible."
On the other hand, noted Sabre's Kroeger, "You want to make sure the dialogue is taking place in the context of the travel manager's goals, aligning with policy compliance, preferred vendors and the other business interests of the company. It's new water we're going into, which may not be completely charted out."
"There are different perspectives around control," noted Concur president and COO Raj Singh. "But one takeaway is that there are trends afoot. If you don't have a strategy over the next 12 to 18 months, it's likely your travelers will have their own."
~ Jay Campbell
© Copyright 2008 Business Travel Beat, Inc.
www.businesstravelbeat.com
Republished with permission from The Beat