The Carlson Wagonlit Travel Business Survey has revealed ...
- four in five companies now operate a formal travel policy. Three quarters of policies covers all four main aspects of business travel - air, hotels, car hire and rail travel.
- three quarters of companies feel that the service they receive from their travel management company, in terms of arranging business travel, is more important than five years ago.
- although three quarters of business travellers belong to a frequent flyer scheme, 40% of those admit they do not know which programme offers the best reward.
- more than half of all decision-makers claimed they were unaware of airlines cutting the commission paid to agents when flights are booked.
- 41% of travellers neither support nor oppose the move to abolish duty-free duty free shopping within Europe in 1999. This represents only a marginal difference to the 43% of travellers surveyed who said that they opposed the move in some degree.
- almost half of all business travllers would be prepared to travel on a less expensive no-frills flights on short-haul routes within Europe.
- the vast majority of companies (85%) do not book travel electronically. Currently, only 7% of companies e-mail their travel management company with business travel arrangements and only 4% use an on-line system via the WWW.
- most business travellers describe the experience of ticketless travel as positive. Quicker check-in procedures was cited by two in five travellers as the most relevant description of their experience with ticketless travel, and 26% described the system as hassle free.
Technical details
MORI's telephone unit interviewd three separate audiences consisting of 268 decision-makers, 125 travellers and 75 bookers. A total of 468 interviews were carried out in November - December 1997 of which 40 were with FTSE 100 companies.
