Corporate travel agency, BCD Travel, expects a shortage of accommodation and flights to Brisbane around the middle of July when the Final State of Origin match is scheduled to take place.

Business travellers intending to fly to Brisbane on or around July 15 should book their corporate travel early or delay or bring forward their business travel to avoid disappointment.

BCD Travel provides more than a corporate travel booking service, they are also highly experienced groups and incentives organisers. The first step in planning business travel and meetings incentives conferences exhibitions (MICE), is to check if any major community activities are occurring in the city of your event.

Business travel should be avoided at the time of major community events as demand becomes very strong for flights and accommodation, meaning corporate travellers will likely pay higher prices and could miss out on flights and accommodation.

BCD Travel has an event calendar on its public corporate travel website that is designed to assist corporate travellers planning trips away. Other upcoming events include the Wallabies vs Italy match in Canberra June 15-18; the Wallabies vs Italy match in Melbourne on June 20 and the Wallabies vs France match in Sydney on June 27.

A facility services company is among the many large corporate travel clients of travel management company, BCD Travel. Spending an average $3 million in corporate travel per year with up to 700 individual staff members taking business travel trips, the company wanted to cut corporate travel expenditure and achieve more control.

BCD Travel firstly set up a strategic framework aimed at ensuring compliance, enabling fast and easy reporting and reducing costs through preferred supplier arrangements. This included orchestrating an airline agreement and a hotel and car rental program.

The corporate travel agency created a tailored customer profile on its online booking engine (OBE) with all the rules in the new corporate travel policy implemented. This meant removing various booking options to ensure staff followed the new policy.

The online booking engine (OBE) and its self-booking travel tools were a vital part of giving back control to the company. BCD Travel trained the company’s designated business travel coordinators on how to use the system and continue to provide ongoing support.

The results were immediate and enabled this client to cut costs by 30% or $750,000.

To read more, visit the BCD Travel White Paper section.

Corporate travel agency, BCD Travel, has increased its client base in 2008-09 as more companies identify BCD Travel as the best travel management company to assist them in cost savings and the professional management of their corporate travel expenditure.

The third largest travel management company in the world, BCD Travel has three offices in Australia in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and services large and small business travel clients across the country.

BCD Travel prides itself on personalised customer service with high attention to detail as well as its online technology solutions, including its online booking engine which contains individual client profiles and self-booking travel tools tailored to each client’s internal corporate travel policies.

With international connections and the best deals available on flights and accommodation, as well as a fully integrated meetings incentives conferences exhibitions (MICE) department, BCD Travel offers a complete travel management solution.

For information on how travel management company, BCD Travel, can assist you please contact our National Sales Manager via email at sales@bcdtravel.com.au

Corporate travel agency, BCD Travel, is recommending that companies check their on-hold tickets as the end of the 2008-09 financial year approaches.

‘Tickets on hold’ are tickets that have been booked for corporate travel but were later cancelled. Once cancelled, flexible tickets allow the purchaser to re-use those tickets within a certain timeframe, usually one year.

BCD Travel says companies should check their tickets on hold quarterly to identify potential savings in using those tickets to keep business travel expenses down.

In 2008-09, some of BCD Travel’s major corporate travel clients have saved tens of thousands of dollars by utilising their business travel tickets on hold.

The BCD Travel online booking engine enables individual business travel clients to view a list of their tickets on hold to help them plan their corporate travel more cost-effectively.