Seven trends that will change business travel

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Obviously, the recession is changing the travel business. You’ve heard it all before – and if you’ve flow or stayed in a hotel lately, you’ve undoubtedly seen it. Sometimes, the big issue of the day can mask others that will be important down the road. Travel industry research firm PhoCusWright has identified seven trends in the travel business that you’ll want to keep an eye on. These are the factors that will have a long and profound effect on the business of getting suit-clad travelers from Point A to Point B. And, let’s face it: these are the people who matter most to travel and hospitality businesses.

“We have identified seven essential trends with the potential to shake corporate travel management to its core,” said Susan Steinbrink, PhoCusWright‘s senior research and corporate market analyst. “Ranging from the environment to videoconferencing, supply chain management, mobile services and more, these trends are poised to impact the amount spent on travel, alter corporate purchasing priorities and touch every player in the corporate travel landscape, including suppliers, TMCs, technology providers, credit card companies, and of course the corporate traveler.”

1. Managing the “Triple Bottom Line”
The “bottom line” is easy enough to understand: that’s the profit a company earns for all its hard work. But, two more bottom lines have entered the corporate lexicon, involving the environmental and social implications of how they operate. With more businesses committing to corporate social responsibility – and even hiring professionals to plan and manage these efforts – expect to see businesses that send their employees on the road to start considering the environmental effects of doing so. After payroll, travel and expense (T&E) is the second largest controllable expense in the business world, and air travel is responsible for 7 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. This is an area ripe for corporate action.

2. Integrated travel booking and expense management
Webs of partnerships have arisen, making it difficult for corporate travel buyers to get a single view of where and how travel dollars are being spent. Acquisitions and alliances are reshaping the booking business and will ultimately deliver a seamless solution for tracking and managing pre-trip spending through post-trip reconciliation and evaluation. With every budget dollar being watched closely, this is a natural result in an expense-sensitive business climate.

3. Tracking the travel supply chain
Businesses investing in travel for their employees are watching the data more closely, a trend that will only gain momentum, according to PhoCusWright. Buyers will start to watch every aspect of supplier relationships, looking for ways to increase collaboration and reduce costs. Metrics will reign supreme, as decisions that can be quantified can make a company’s cash more productive. And, incentives and penalties for expense management can be brought to bear on employees.

4. Switch from the trip to the traveler
An abundance of data will cause travel companies to look past the transaction, which has been their major focus to date. A wealth of information available now enables travel suppliers to examine consumer behavior more closely, providing insights that can lead to future opportunities to maximize revenue (a situation that these companies need desperately right now). As airlines, hotels and other travel companies learn more about you, they can do a better job of selling to you, ultimately leading to better financial performance (and possibly increased traveler satisfaction).

5. On your devices
Seventy percent of business travelers are using internet-enabled handheld devices, making mobile a promising channel for both sales and customer interaction. Enhanced technology will improve multimedia over the device-driven internet and improve payment systems. These developments will reshape how the traveler interacts with the service provider, challenging existing habits, loyalties and tolerances.

6. Skip the trip
Expense management has pushed travel spending downward this year, and memories of this recession won’t fade easily. Alternatives to travel – including conference calls and video conferencing – are increasing in popularity and should continue to erode travel spending.

7. Little guys become big players
Smaller and medium-sized businesses spend plenty of money on travel, but they tend to lack the resources to centralize the purchasing and management process. As they seek to control travel expenses, many will turn to hosted and integrated travel booking and reporting systems to help them find inefficiencies and save some cash. As this happens, the opacity of this sector will melt away, giving travel companies a better view of how to service this high-value segment of the market.

How green is your hotel?

by Katie Hammel on

Not too long ago, any hotel that had one of those “please reuse your towels” signs in the bathroom was considered “green“. But with new hotels upping the ante by adding more features that reduce waste and environmental impact, it takes a lot more than that to truly be green. Here are some of the greenest hotel features to look for in an eco-friendly hotel.

Sheet and Towel Reuse Programs
Literally, this is the least a hotel can do. Asking guests to reuse towels and only changing the linens every few days or between guests no doubt saves water (and money for the hotel) but those positive contributions can easily be negated through other actions. If this all the hotel does, it might just be more frugal than green.

Bulk Toiletry Dispensers
Every time you check into a hotel, you’re provided with small bottles of face wash, body wash, lotion, shampoo and conditioner. Even if you’ve only used a minuscule drop, those bottles are tossed out and restocked at the end of your stay. This happens every day, for every room sold, at hotels all around the world. That’s a lot of tiny bottles clogging up landfills. The greener option being implemented in many hotels is to install bulk dispensers (similar to soap dispensers in public restrooms) that dole out small amounts of shampoo, soap and lotion without the extra packaging.

Local and Organic Cooking
Hotel restaurant chefs that use local, fair-trade, sustainable and organic ingredients get a gold-star for for being green. Using local products means that the food travels less to get to the consumer, which in turn means less energy is used and less emissions are added to the air from the planes, trains and trucks that transport food. Organic ingredients are created without the chemicals and pesticides that can harm the surrounding eco-systems, fair-trade products support local farmers, and sustainable foodstuffs are made in a way that doesn’t deplete the natural resources of the area. Hotels that employ these practices in their restaurants are doing something that is not only healthy for their guests, but is healthy for the community and environment as well. The hotel gets even more bonus points if some or all of the produce comes from the hotel’s own garden.

Green Lighting Practices
Replacing fluorescent light bulbs with ENERGY STAR certified compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) means that a hotel will use 75% less energy per year. While hotel guests can do their part by turning off all unnecessary lights when not in the room, some hotels, like the LEED-certified Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco, make this easier by requiring the lights to be activated by key card. The key card, usually attached to the hotel key, must be inserted into a slot in order to turn the lights on. Since you’ll obviously need to take the key and lighting key card with you when you leave the room, there’s no way you can leave the lights on while you’re out.

Green Building Materials
The buildings at Sadie Cove Wilderness Lodge in Alaska are constructed from scavenged driftwood, the mattresses and bedding at the Asheville Green Cottage in South Carolina are made from all organic materials, and the walls at Los Manos B&B in Colorado are built of local adobe and the ceilings are insulated with cellulose from old newspapers. All of these properties are using green building practices that help conserve precious resources. Using recycled, organic, scavenged and eco-friendly (like low-emission paints) materials in the building process makes a hotel green from the very beginning.

Reducing Water Usage
The El Monte Sagrado in Taos, New Mexico filters its wastewater into pure drinking water, but there are plenty of other ways hotels can save water that are a littler easier to do. Many green hotels install low-flow regulators in showers and toilet tanks, and some even put in automatic-timer showers that shut off after a certain number of minutes. (You can restart them with the push of a button, but the ticking clock serves as a powerful reminder to make it quick). Hotels in temperate areas have chosen to do their landscaping with tropical plants, which require less water to maintain.

Alternative Power
Many hotels are looking to alternative sources of power; the Alpine House in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gets all of its power from wind turbines. Look for hotels that boast the use of solar and wind power for even part of their energy usage. Hotels that use shade trees and crosswinds to cool rooms, rather than air conditioning, also increase their eco-friendly factor.

Recycling Programs
All the paper used in the Hotel Triton in San Francisco, from napkins in the restaurant to stationary in the guest rooms, is made from recycled materials. Of course, after it’s used, it still gets tossed out. I’ve never seen a recycling bin in any hotel I’ve stayed in, and I highly doubt that housekeeping takes the time to separate recyclables from trash. As a result, plenty of paper, aluminum and plastic that could be recycled ends up getting tossed. Any hotel that offers recycling bins in the room is one step up on the green ladder.

Green Cleaning Products
Using non-toxic, all-natural cleaning products helps reduce the amount of dangerous chemicals that get into the water system and cause pollution. Look for hotels like Denver’s Queen Anne Bed and Breakfast which uses only baking soda to its clean tubs, sinks and toilets.

Other Green Practices
When combined with some of these larger-scale practices, the smallest acts can help make a green hotel even more eco-friendly. All Fairmont hotels offer free parking for hybrid cars, the Vancouver Hilton offers an alternative fueling station, and many hotels will provide free bikes for guests to get around on. Stocking guest rooms with glass drinking cups instead of plastic and relying on natural lighting as much as possible in public areas are two additional practices that make a big difference.

I doubt there’s any hotel that employs every single one of these practices. But it’s a safe bet to say that the more of these strategies a hotel uses, the greener it is. No hotel will have zero impact on the environment, but choosing a hotel that take does its best to use environmentally-friendly policies will help make your travels greener.

The Brando eco-friendly beach resort to open in 2011

by Katie Hammel on

Did you know that Marlon Brando owned (and now his estate owns) an entire French Polynesian atoll 35 miles from Tahiti? Did you also know that Brando dreamed of creating an eco-friendly resort on the atoll? Well both are true, and by 2011 Brando’s dream will be a reality, thanks to Richard Bailey, CEO of Tahiti Beachcomber.

Bailey was a longtime friend of Brando’s and had been working with him on the project before Brando’s death in 2004. Bailey owns four InterContinental resorts in Tahiti and will use some of the same sustainable technology used at those resorts to make sure The Brando has as little impact on the surrounding environment as possible. One technology will use a pipe to bring cold water up from the depths of the sea and use it to provide cool air to the rooms – a practice that will have zero environmental impact.

The resort, which will be the only one on the 13-island chain of Tetiaroa that Brando bought in 1965, will feature 47 luxury villas, each with its own plunge pool, plus a spa, fitness center, and a resort pool. Activities at the resort will include snorkeling, scuba diving, and exploring the nearby islands and Tahitian culture. No word on how much a stay at the luxury eco-resort will cost, but no one ever said saving the environment didn’t come with a price.

[via ShermansTravel]

Finnish trash cans talk back

by Tom Johansmeyer on

This summer, the garbage cans of Helsinki will have something to say … to you … in six languages. The strange people who brought you wife-carrying contests and team berry-picking (you just can’t make this stuff up) are happy to present the talking trash receptacle – which comes with a musical “thank you.” Nowhere else in the world is litter discouraged with such positive reinforcement. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see much trash on the ground when I was over there.

Last year at this time, Helsinki put four of these devices in the center of the city. They were so unbelievably successful that the Finns have doubled tripled down on the concept. Look for eight more of these contraptions in the Finnish capital this year. Simo Frangén, a popular Finnish TV personality, was kind enough to give his voice to the cause. The new trash cans will be located near Esplanadi, Senate Square, Sibelius Monument and Temppeliaukio Church.

These crazy devices will speak Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, English, German, Polish, and Russian.Also, some will provide fun musical sounds created by high school students from the Kruununhaka district of Helsinki as part of the Helsinki City Public Works youth campaign.”

And the happiest place on Earth is …

by Tom Johansmeyer on

… not Disney World!

Despite the theme park’s claim, Costa Rica actually takes the top spot, according to the New Economics Foundation. This Britain-based independent research firm uses the “Happy Planet Index” to determine and rank the countries with the happiest people. The organization’s goal is to build a new economy that focuses on people and the environment.

This year’s survey covered 143 countries, with Latin American claiming nine of the top 10 positions in the study. The Dominican Republic took second, followed by Jamaica, Guatemala and Vietnam.

If you live in a developed nation, it seems, you’re probably unhappy. Great Britain took 74th, and the United States came in at 114. But, the latter is happier than it was 20 years ago. China and India are also fairly unhappy, but mostly because they are pursuing aggressive economic growth.

Now, the results are skewed because ecological implications account for a substantial portion of how happy a country is. The study assumes that the further you are from carbon-neutral, the unhappier you are. I’m down for going green, but I really struggle to see how it plays such a large role in a country’s happiness.