While cost has been the main focus in the corporate travel world for many years noise is now being made about traveller wellbeing.
Much of it stems from the ‘duty of care’ responsibility on employers as well as the trend towards assessing the total cost of travel. And, there are those that think if you look after your staff they’ll be more productive.
A few weeks ago AirPlus hooked up its employees to heart monitors to gauge the impact of business travel.
Carlson Wagonlit Travel is taking the process a step further and plans to develop an algorithm to analyse the cost of travel versus the cost to the individual traveller.
 The project, being handled by CWT Solutions Group, is at a conceptual stage and unlikely to see the light of day before Christmas.
The plan is to kick it off in the next couple of weeks with a survey to corporate clients to understand the elements that create the most stress.
CWT then hopes to combine clients’ transactional data, customer profile and trip information including choice of supplier, route, cabin class and property at destination to build a picture of how the choices made impact the traveller experience.
Vincent Lebunetel, EMEA director of CWT Solution Group says:
“The traveller, based upon his decisions and behaviour has many options to go from A to B and, depending on those choices, Â will influence the cost of travel, his own personal stress level and therefore, productivity.”
Version two will also leverage public information such as airline on-time arrival and luggage delivery performance tables. CWT also wants to factor in visa information and the need for vaccinations and anything that might add stress to the journey.
Hotels in the CWT database are already geo-coded as are clients’ offices so elements such as average distance between hotel and office are already at its disposal.
The cynical amongst you might say that if the traveller has an easier journey the cost will go up and the chart above does demonstrate the financial implication of a less stressed traveller but Lebunetel says:
“That could reflect the reality but what we want to point out is that if you’re really looking at the cost of travel you should not forget the productivity level and that is directly linked to the travel experience.”
In the clip he also discusses figures from the International Labour Organisation on staff turnover and absenteeism as a result of stress and the financial impact on businesses.
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