According to a new research by American Express Business Travel, corporate travel professionals are increasingly using social media to communicate with travellers and to stay on top of latest travel industry information. Respondents also reported high expectations regarding their companies’ future social media usage plan, reporting that within the next year forums, webcasts, and online video are the most likely to be implemented by businesses.The latest research report ‘Social Media in Business Travel Management’ by American Express Business Travel’s eXpert insights research practice outlines the evolution of social media tools and sites from consumer use to business-to-business use, and illustrates how social media supports managed business travel today. The research also includes survey results conducted in the beginning of 2010 to reveal how individuals, as well as their companies are currently embracing social media technology and how they might use these tools to support managed travel in the future.

Christa Degnan Manning, director, eXpert insights, American Express Business Travel said, “As businesses around the globe alter the way they communicate and receive information from clients and prospects, social media has also proven to be a useful and effective tool to share pertinent information with employees and drive change in organisations.”
Alicia Tillman, Vice President, corporate affairs and marketing services, American Express Business Travel said, “Applying this research to the social networking platform we’ve launched, BusinessTravelConneXion,
it is encouraging to see corporate travel departments becoming more comfortable with this form of collaboration. We will continue to provide a free forum to share ideas, connect community members and offer webcasts, videos and blogs to meet the demand for industry information and connection entrepreneurial travel category managers are looking for today.”

Social Media Finds a Role in Corporate Travel
Social media has evolved to play a role in business travel programmes. While half (50 per cent) of respondents said that they use social media to some extent to support travel management today, mid-size companies (USD three million to USD ten million in air volume) were the largest adopters (59 per cent) of social media to support business travel management to date.

Many respondents indicated that the primary benefit of social media in supporting managed travel is educating themselves or their organisation about the market. In fact, 44 per cent indicated that staying on top of the latest travel information was the most important social media benefit. This response was followed closely by the interest in using social networking to learn and communicate best practices and reduce business travel costs (43 per cent). Other findings include:

• 42 per cent use social networking to look for preferred vendors and services from travellers
• 34 per cent seek to uncover travel patterns that could lend to better vendor rates and services
• 27 per cent look to gain visibility into traditional business functions/departments
• 26 per cent use social media tools to encourage travellers to network with each other
• 18 per cent network with other travel manager/procurement officer peers

Customisation and Oversight Desired For Expanded Social Media Use
Of those survey respondents who do use social media to support travel management, when asked specifically what features or functionality would they add if they could design their own social media tools for professional use, the majority (61 per cent) indicated they wanted flexibility to accommodate business travel management processes. Other top ranking features/functionality include:

• Real time updates such as mobile application, the ability to push out notifications and alerts (39 per cent)
• Supervision of the entire social media sharing process and specific monitoring of those who are using social media tools (35 per cent)
• Reporting ability — notification to website abuse, comments and security issues (29 per cent)

Corporations Apprehensive About Implementing Social Media Tools
Even though the global economic crisis curbed spending, financing was not the main social networking adoption barrier. In fact, only six per cent of respondents cited lack of funding as the most significant barrier or challenge to adopt social media tools.

The most significant barrier to adoption of social media as an organisation has been the lack of direct benefits realisation. About 20 per cent found the business case for social media tools and usage within travel management programmes unclear. Lack of strategy or understanding and lack of support from upper management each followed at 15 per cent respectively.

Notably, only five per cent of respondents indicated that they have had no barriers or challenges to adopt social media tools as an organisation. “While companies have a way to go to embrace widespread social media acceptance, they are involved in evaluating how to use these new technologies rather than dismissing it particularly as younger generations enter the workforce and move up the corporate ladder,” stated Manning.