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Aligning with procurement: The Changing Role of The Travel Manager, Part 1.

Publication: Business Travel News
Publication Date: 12-MAY-03 		Format: Online - approximately 1163 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access

Article Excerpt
The shift of supplier contracting away from travel managers' responsibilities at many companies has raised questions about the future of the profession. Factors contributing to a dampening of enthusiasm--evident in recent industry seminars entitled Will There Be Managed Travel In Five Years? and Die Another Day--include the growing influence of procurement departments, senior management-driven reciprocal arrangements and the possibilities of suppliers dropping deals or distributors taking them over.

Yet, while such changes as the increasingly common and never painless alignment of procurement and travel can be scary, they do not have to mean that justifying the value of travel management today is any more arduous than it is different. Not only is negotiating with vendors but one of many travel management functions, but the movement by procurement departments to take over travel contracting has worked only in the rarest of instances and only with a large degree of collaboration.

"People are saying things like, 'Discerning organizations have begun to accept that travel is much like supplies,' but I absolutely do not believe that,"...

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