The failure of major financial institutions last month followed by weeks-long chaos on Wall Street has caused many companies to re-evaluate their solvency and spending, particularly in a line item that few employees want to sacrifice: travel.
While cutting back on business travel has been a concern this year given the rising cost of airfare, the recent turmoil has provided an added urgency, according to experts in the business travel industry.
To address the issue, travel managers are considering everything from curtailing trips that aren’t revenue-generated to renegotiating contracts with hotels to include free Internet or gym access to asking employees of the same sex to share hotel rooms.
“There’s a lot of shock, a lot of gallows humor,” says Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, a nonprofit association based in Alexandria, Va. While at an ACTE-sponsored conference in Rome last week, Gurley overheard executives debating different cost-cutting strategies.
“People are trying to figure out what trips are critical,” she says. “It seems like an easy thing to know, but they’re analyzing it over and over again.”
The deep-thinking is bringing about changes to the travel policy at many corporations or emboldening executives to enforce those rules.
Read more at Forbes
