In a recent survey of Indian CFOs by the American Express Business Travel Monitor, a welcome finding was that two-thirds of the executives were planning to increase their travel spend this year. “This is much higher compared to only 40 per cent of CFOs worldwide looking at a higher travel spend,” says Sandeep Shastri, Vice-President and General Manager of American Express' Global Business Travel in India.

The Indian economy, fuelled by a strong internal demand and a rising middle-class, is considered a “high growth and high potential” market in the aviation industry. “We are witnessing a double-digit growth in travel spending and frequencies among some of our clients in the region and in India.” Indian companies are looking at “a strategic management of their business travel”. 

He says that as early as 2007, business travel volumes had started shrinking and in mid-2008, when the financial downturn started, there was a huge drop — almost 40 per cent by 2008-09 — as Indian companies reduced their expenditure on business travel. There was a corresponding shrink in the number of travel agencies and people working in travel trade. Though leisure travel was hit too, business travel took more of a beating.

As companies looked at new ways of managing their travel, those in the travel trade, including Amex, had to look at new technologies like Cisco's TelePresence and video conferencing. “We helped companies in organising and using such tools.” They also helped clients review their travel policies, initiate new ones, manage travel investment and consolidate travel spends in order to “ride that dollar much further”.

But now that a “new normal” is emerging in business travel, things are looking up for the travel trade. But, of course, companies are still looking to club visits of their employees and get more efficiency from a single trip. Shastri adds that even though both China and India have seen positive economic growth from the second half of 2010, and greater business travel has re-emerged, “companies are still watching their travel budgets”.

During the downtrend many companies, particularly those in the IT sector, opted for economy rather than business-class travel and most IT companies continue this policy. Also, business travellers are looking at budget and mid-range hotels to manage their travel spend better.

As for food, for vegetarians, he says, this continues to be a challenge in some markets like Korea, Japan and China, “though in China you do have a fair number of vegetarian restaurants in the larger cities, but Korea continues to be a challenge.”

Amex does provide a ready-reckoner, particularly for first-time travellers. “We provide a detailed checklist on dos and don'ts, cultural sensitivities etc and many clients are including this in their new-hire orientation.” They are told to ready basic information and relevant documents for immigration, carry local currency, have medical insurance, and the like.

While his team does help out with programmes for spouse/companion where companies allow this in their business travel, the more important area is providing assistance in emergencies.

Giving the example of the recent tsunami in Japan, Shastri says they had 43 client companies with “a very large number of travellers in Japan at that time and we got in touch with all of them. Most of them wanted to get out immediately, but some asked us to create interim measures.” His team helped out with hotel bookings in Tokyo and people were moved to a safer and more secure environment till normalcy was restored.

Much earlier, in Thailand, when the Red Shirts agitation had affected the Bangkok airport, “we organised a chartered flight to fly out a large number of our stranded clients by rerouting them through Singapore. In such emergencies, we have to consider not only hotel and airline availability, but also arrange the required visas. All that homework is fairly complex and we handled it like a project!”

Shastri adds that with an increasing number of women travelling on business, “there is definitely a conscious effort not only from our side but our partners' — hotels and airlines — to handle the requirements and expectations of women travellers better.” More care is taken in the booking of taxis/cars and many hotels follow more stringent security norms for single-women travellers.

But the most interesting part is that some airlines have introduced exclusive toilets for women.

Go ahead, Google “women-only toilets in airlines” and read some interesting stuff, particularly on some blogs, on what men have to say on this subject!

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