Study suggests corporate travel managers are in total denial about economic downturn

by Christopher Elliott on October 20, 2008

The fundamentals of the American economy are sound. No, that’s not campaign rhetoric. That’s according to a new poll of corporate travel managers conducted by the National Business Travel Association.

As I reviewed the survey results, I couldn’t help but be struck by how out of touch these travel managers seem. For example:

¶ About half of respondents, are reporting a “mild impact” on business travel by the weak economy.

¶ 56 percent of the buyers “feel confident” about meeting their agreed levels of spend with their suppliers.

¶ The same percentage of buyers have “no intentions” of scaling back on quotas agreed with travel suppliers.

Wow. Can you say “clueless”?

But wait. It gets better. Click through to the survey and you’ll read …

¶ When it comes to higher fuel prices, 22 percent of respondents said it had “no effect” on their companies and that it was “business as usual.”

¶ Only 2 percent of respondents were afraid the current economy might lead to their position being eliminated.

Oh. My. Goodness.

It gets worse.

¶ Asked if the airlines’ controversial and dishonest “a-la-carte” pricing would affect their ability to control travel costs, a full quarter said they “don’t know.” (Isn’t it their job to know?)

¶ Roughly the same number said new minimum stay requirements would “barely” increase their airfares. Isn’t that the whole point of minimum stay requirements?

¶ On the other hand, 20 percent of travel managers indicated they would be willing to book a back-to-back ticket to get around the new requirements. Never mind that it could get their travel agent into lots of trouble.

Hang on. Here are a few more gems.

¶ More than half of the respondents don’t see a buyers’ market in the hotel industry despite the current economic situation. I wonder what planet they’re living on.

¶ Nearly 40 percent believe business travel will “continue expanding.”

These results pretty much speak for themselves.

My question is: Why would NBTA release numbers like this, that not only show how out of touch its members are with reality, but make a powerful argument for the elimination or outsourcing of the travel manager’s position?

The answer, inevitably, will be found in the comments.

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Tagged as: business travel, NBTA, poll

  • http://www.travelskills.com/ticket.htm cjm

    Chris I think you are being a little harsh here. Maybe the corp travel managers interviewed for this survey were simply reporting what they are seeing/observing at their companies. Many of these interviews were done months ago before the stock market crashed. And maybe, just maybe, things are not as bad as the media is portraying them to be. I mean, that BTC report out today says that only a quarter of travel managers report having to make emergency cuts in travel spending….based on the current hysteria, I would think that percentage would be much higher.

  • john m

    Each day I review the number of transactions that the agents in my office do and they are only 5% higher this year when compared to last year. This doesn’t sound like companies are cutting travel to me, if anything it indicates that they are doing more of it.

    Regretfully, I don’t have time to address each issue you brought up in your article but let me point out a couple things that may have impacted the answers given. For example, the 20% of travel managers who say that the minimum stay requirements will barely increase their travel expenses may be the ones whose travel policy is to fly on unrestricted airfares or they may be traveling in markets that don’t have minimum stays or they may have contracts in place with airlines that waive such things.

    As for feeling confident that they will meet their goals with their vendors, perhaps they set conservative goals and know that won’t be an issue or perhaps they don’t see that their company is planning on cutting back on travel. I know a number of my clients are planning on continuing to travel at least as much this year as last.

    In short, without an explanation of why they answered the way that they did, you are left to draw your own conclusions and you can spin them anyway you wish.

  • Craig

    John m has it right. My company uses unrestricted airfares and we have all kinds of coporate perks built into our contracts. Those issues will not affect us. We have cut back in some travel with more teleconferencing, but other travel has increased where we have to meet face-to-face and new opportunities come up. In the long run, we are traveling about the same, but costs have been frozen in our current contracts. We do not operate travel like you do your family travels.

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