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Jennifer Fitzgerald
Jennifer Fitzgerald outlines the global warming concerns driving the discourse at the Association for Corporate Travel Executives
2008-10-12
Once again, ACTE is fortifying its European base to make it stronger than ever and to better serve its membership. Due to increased demand for its educational events throughout Europe, ACTE now has expanded its volunteer and staffing resources in the region.
A new Country Champion programme is now in place allowing ACTE to continue to deliver market-focused global and regional educational leadership through the implementation of country leaders representing some of Europe’s Top Fortune 500 companies. ACTE Country Champions now include Diane Laschet, Country Manager, AirPlus International representing Italy; Ralph Ruckgaber, Travel Manager EMEA, IBM representing Germany; Claire Stephens, Travel Manager, Coca-Cola representing the United Kingdom, and Yves Galimidi, Purchase Manager Travel, IKEA representing Belgium and Luxembourg.
Jennifer Fitzgerald, Regional Manager, based in Germany, and Pilar Sánchez Aita, Regional Manager, based in Spain, will support all educational events throughout the region. The team will concentrate on membership and expanding ACTE’s educational events to meet the market demands in Europe.
Later this year, ACTE will hold its second Global Education Conference in Rome, 5-7 October. Keynote and Sponsor Industry Perspective presentations will be given by well-known, internationally respected leaders in travel and business such as Dr. Nariman Behravesh, Chief Economist, Global Insight; Sylvia Poggioli, Senior European Correspondent, National Public Radio, and John F. Burns, London Bureau Chief, The New York Times. Other ACTE educational events throughout Europe in 2008 will be held in key cities including Stuttgart, London, Helsinki, Paris, Russia, Madrid, Milan and others.
Corporate Social Responsibility
ACTE has collaborated with KDS, the European leader in on-demand travel and expense, to produce a study on the impact of global warming on the business travel industry in the last few years. The third annual ACTE - KDS survey, led by Stanislas Berteloot, marketing director of KDS, demonstrates growing environmental concern within the business travel industry. The survey sampled the opinions of 263 business travellers (53 percent of the sample) and travel managers (47 percent) between November 2007 and January 2008. Respondents were mostly employed by large corporations based in the U.K., U.S. and Continental Europe. In this survey, ACTE and KDS shared two goals: to continue to raise awareness in the business travel industry of the need to consider the environment and to create a benchmark for executives to evaluate their respective CSR programs against those of other global companies.
Over the past year, it has become clear that behaviour towards the environment is increasingly viewed as an ethical, moral and even personal issue. Accordingly, this is why ACTE and KDS added new survey questions in 2007 to gauge the views of respondents regarding their personal feelings on issues such as their employer's CSR program and guilt associated with the impact of their travel
Respondents had to decide whether to answer the survey as travellers or travel managers – in the latter case, replies reflected the policies of their employers. The survey results reflect that there is an interesting gap, however, between the perception of travellers and what data is being reported by travel managers. Respondents who answered as travellers seemed more inclined toward green behaviour than travel managers; the actual travellers also tend to believe that their companies’ support of sustainable travel was greater than travel managers actually indicated in the survey. From 2006, the number of respondents rose by 127 percent to 263. Fifty-three percent of those replied as travellers (i.e. referring to their own experience rather than their company’s). Collectively, respondents represented a truly global picture, with 30 percent based in the United Kingdom, 24 percent in the United States and 23 percent in Continental Europe; Africa, Northern and Eastern Europe, and Canada each accounted for five percent; Asia represented 2 percent and Latin America one percent. Forty percent were employed in corporations employing more than 10,000 people. Fifteen percent of respondents said they worked in companies with 1 to 100 employees. Respondents were frequent travellers: 31 percent made over 30 trips per year, while 42 percent travelled more than 20 times a year.
Travel management
68 percent of respondents (travellers and travel managers) said that their company had increased its travel spend in 2007 versus 2006. This compares to the previous year’s survey in which 63.4 percent declared an increase in spending from 2005 levels. This number is even greater when isolating travel managers’ replies: 75 percent of those said spending has risen, whereas only 66 percent of travellers spoke of an increase. The vast majority – 69 percent – of companies use a self booking tool to manage their travel arrangements; 42 percent still have no expense reporting tool, other than paper or Excel processes. End-to-end solutions appear to be gaining ground, with 12 percent of corporations using an integrated online travel and expense solution, compared with 8 percent in the previous year’s study. Almost every respondent reported that their company had a travel policy. However, it is interesting to note that, while 95.3 percent of travel managers say their corporations have a written travel policy, only 87.6 percent of travellers seemed aware of it. Similarly, it is striking that 54.7 percent of travellers claimed to book journeys online, but only 43 percent of travel managers said that reservations were made online.
Sustainable travel
This year’s survey showed a 15 percent increase in this behaviour as compared to the previous year. The above pie charts clearly illustrate that, although a majority of companies (59 percent) now have CSR charters, sustainable travel is promoted by these initiatives only a third of the time (34 percent). These figures are consistent with those of last year and show that, as in 2006, many companies are still working on the creation of a sustainable travel program. It appears that adjusting travel patterns to take full account of global warming will take years and is closely linked to the availability of environmentally-friendly options from suppliers. As seen in Chart 5, there as an increase in the proportion of corporations suggesting a reduction in travel to meet their environmental goals. Charts 6 and 7 aggregate replies from both travellers and travel managers. Although the majority still believe the impact of business travel on the environment to be the responsibility of corporations, 44 percent of the respondents said that a sense of ‘guilt’ about their travel choices may influence individuals’ decisions. Chart 8 below shows that when replying to the ACTE – KDS survey as individual travellers, rather than as professional travel managers, respondents seemed more inclined to express personal beliefs. Fifty-one percent of employees said their company “could be more active in the CSR area.” As a traveller working for a very large corporation in South Africa commented, “We haven't started to think about carbon emissions.” In Canada, a travel manager noted, “We are now starting the process to green our building; there is a movement among the employees to do more and it is in our action plan.”
Overall, employees tend to give credit to their employers for their commitment to CSR. Thirty-nine percent of travellers and travel managers said their companies were “doing the right thing.” Only six percent said that their company was “lots of talk but no action,” while just 4 percent claimed that their company was “doing nothing.” Environmental sustainability is gaining support within corporations. Cost reduction and employee security were still top of corporations' priorities in 2007. It is encouraging to note that supporting environmental sustainability was a low strategic priority for only 26 percent of respondents in 2007, as opposed to 45 percent in 2006. Accordingly, it became a medium priority for 45 percent (versus 35 percent a year ago) and a high priority for 29 percent (20 percent in 2006). As a consequence, travel procurement rules are increasingly governed by environmental concerns. While there was no discernible increase between 2006 and 2007, 19 percent of the respondents said that, when booking a trip, their choices of transportation were influenced through a company travel policy that gave preference to vendors with lower carbon dioxide emissions or by a proper corporate environmental charter.
