Evolving roles of travel arrangers and managers highlighted at event in Belgrade

(Srdjan Dzuver, general manager of Amadeus Serbia)

Sitting on the cross roads of the river Sava and Danube, Belgrade played host to a top 35 corporations of Serbia to explore a number of important topics in corporate business travel.

The event, arranged by local Amadeus office, local HRG, and Air Serbia featured a crowd composed of travel arrangers and managers, with the focus on how to achieve more efficient travel-related processes while optimizing costs.

Topics of discussion included how corporations spend up to 20-30€ per hour planning business travel and how this figure could be reduced with an shift from traditional methods (offline travel management done mostly via email and or phone) to an efficient online corporate booking tool (with ability to reduce booking time to an average 3 min) for simple point-to-point trips, which account for up to 80% of most corporate travel. These bookings can be done either by travellers themselves or with the assistance of their travel arrangers.

(at the presentation)

Especially of interest was the data suggesting that such a move, together with more defined travel policies, could save corporations up to 20% on their travel expenses by automating many of the manual intensive-processes and consistently applying these corporate rules & policies. Travel arrangers and or managers are provided with: immediate 24x7 access via a single web-based window to rich travel content (Air, Hotel, LCC, Rail, Car and more), a dedicated travel arranger dashboard to manage their traveller’s trips, mobile applications, and an integrated reporting tool.

Ultimately, corporations gain greater visibility on their travel-budgets and control on all their travel-related activities, while allowing both travellers and arrangers to get more value from their travel agencies on their complex trip management.

Finally, Air Serbia showcased their new online business services, including online check-in and new business class seats. This was all wrapped up with a surprise lottery offering business trip tickets for three of the corporations in attendance to be awarded by Air Serbia and HRG Serbia.

Overall, the event, which took place at Belgrade’s beautiful Hotel Falkenstainer, provided attendees with an in-depth overview of the benefits of adopting an advanced online corporate booking tool and how together, corporations, travel arrangers and their travel agencies were critical to achieving a commonly efficient travel management strategy leading to optimized costs.

For more information on the Amadeus company, visit their website or blog.