A method for quantifying travel productivity for corporate travel managers

For large corporations with significant travel budgets, the efficiency in execution of employee travel is critical to the productivity of the enterprise. Air travel disruptions (i.e. delays, cancellations, missed connections) prevent employees from performing enterprise related tasks resulting in lost billable revenue and unbudgeted Indirect costs (e.g. unplanned overnight stays for stranded passengers, and idle time charges). Since travel disruption data is not readily available to Corporate Travel Managers, the Indirect charges cannot be included in budgets, and the magnitude of lost billable revenue is not known. Further, without measuring the travel delays and their impact, it is not possible to understand the underlying causes of the delays to improve the process. This paper describes a method for providing Corporate Travel Departments travel disruption statistics and their impact on revenue and profits. The method overcomes the problem of the absence of data by deriving travel delay statistics for corporate travel from publicly available historic airline flight data-bases. The method also uses a travel delay cost model to estimate the financial impact of travel disruptions. The implications of these results on Corporate Travel Management (CTM) productivity improvement strategies, corporate travel and indirect budgets, contracts with travel providers, and travel insurance are discussed. •Disruptions in corporate travel have an impact on enterprise revenue and profits.•Travel disruption data is not available to Corporate Travel Managers (CTM).•Method for estimating delays, lost revenue and indirect costs is described.