Why Travel Managers Need to Ask for Traveler Feedback

Travel managers specialize in streamlining and simplifying the booking process for their employees. While investments in modern technology, travel automation, and real-time updates and reminders have greatly improved travelers’ experience, most managers are forgetting one essential piece of the puzzle—to ask for feedback. According to a Global Travel Association’s recent survey, the average corporate travel service manager requests feedback just once a year, which is not enough. Shockingly, over 30% never request direct feedback.

Here’s why you should start giving your travelers a voice and listening to what they have to say.

Travelers Are a Wealth Of Knowledge

Your employees are on the receiving end of the perfectly negotiated and planned trip you’ve devised. Even if travelers are aware that the company leverages a travel manager, feedback about problems during the trip may skip over the manager completely and go directly to the hotel, airline, or rental car service.

By implementing a system for feedback, you’ll be able to identify trends that can improve the services you provide. You’ll be able to uncover the vendors who consistently go above and beyond and those not living up to their contractual obligations.

Identify the Company’s Travel Preferences

Your job is to negotiate and define your company’s travel policies. While corporate travel policies are often similar in structure, the details must meet the unique needs of your employees. Both positive and constructive feedback can provide invaluable insight into their preferences.

For example, it’d be helpful to know the following preferences:

• Riding “red-eye” flights
• Booking return flights quickly after a meeting
• Leaving more wiggle room in return flights
• Working with preferred vendors
• Staying in the know about evolving security needs

Improve Your Travel Policy

Too often, travelers send ad-hoc emails to their managers about their trip. Whether they provide positive or negative feedback, this approach results in a pile of emails that managers must sift through. Though quick, emails do not provide a standardized input of data or requests that can be turned in to better policy decisions.

Set up a feedback platform using a free online survey tool to gather the data for you. It’s a central space where your travelers can provide their preferences and feedback eliminating hours of sifting through emails. This assembly of information will help you adjust your travel policy to better serve your travelers.

Customer feedback can easily be automated at the end of each trip or after a designated number of trips. For example, a frequent flyer isn’t likely to provide feedback each week—but may be open to giving feedback each month. Feedback surveys should take no more than 1 minute to complete and can be sent and submitted in the client’s preferred method of communication—email, text, or phone.

Once you start receiving responses, you may find that you need a little extra support when it comes to booking corporate travel. That’s where Adelman Travel comes in. We’ve been in the industry for over three decades and are happy to provide you with a solution that works for your travelers’ needs. Get in touch with us today at (800) 248-5562 to get started!