Corporate Traveller Case Studies

Access Capital Advisers

Corporate Traveller has been managing Access Capital Advisers' travel program since 2004. During that time Corporate Traveller has developed a thorough understanding of the company's operations, staff and business travel nuances. Acting as a consultant, advisor and advocate, Corporate Traveller has formed a tight partnership with Access Capital Advisers, which has helped the company identify and leverage new opportunities to save through smarter purchasing behaviour.

Who is Access Capital Advisers?

Access Capital Advisers is an independent alternative asset investment adviser and asset manager. Access Capital Advisers marries the portfolio construction counsel of an investment adviser with the execution and management skills of an investment manager. The company custom builds alternative asset portfolios for a select group of institutional investors to meet their overall strategic objectives. Access Capital Advisers is 100% employee owned and has 77 people located in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

What were Access Capital Advisers' challenges?

Corporate Traveller account manager Sally King said Access Capital Advisers' main objective was and still is to reduce its overall spend on travel. She said the company sought Corporate Traveller's assistance to decrease its spend on international and domestic airfares through strategic travel management involving smarter purchasing behaviour. The company also wanted to lower its spend on accommodation.

In an effort to achieve these goals, Access Capital Advisers worked closely with Corporate Traveller to develop and implement a new travel policy. The company also sought to streamline its travel booking process with the use of an online booking tool.

What were our strategies?

Travel manager Troy Coelho said a series of travel performance reviews, which started in the first quarter of 2009, kicked off a new era of travel for Access Captial Advisers. The six monthly reviews provided Corporate Traveller with an opportunity to discuss the company's travel performance and make recommendations for improvement. Corporate Traveller implemented a number of strategies for the company to reduce its airfare and hotel expenditure including -:

Shifting to an open skies policy for domestic travel: Prior to 2009, most of Access Capital Advisers' travellers used a premium carrier for both domestic and international air travel. Corporate Traveller recommended the company consider an open skies policy using Best Fare of the Day for as much domestic travel as possible.
Shifting to an open skies policy for international travel: Corporate Traveller recommended the company consider alternative carriers for international travel rather than booking with the one, full-service premium carrier every time they travelled, as they had done in the past. Travellers were asked to obtain three quotes before committing to a flight, this enabled an open skies policy could also be applied to international travel.
Using strategic ticket class purchasing to achieve savings: Corporate Traveller helped Access Capital Advisers develop a solid understanding of fare types and how strategic purchasing of tickets could generate savings. This involved using a combination of discount tickets and flexible tickets rather than using fully-flexible all the time. New puchasing behaviour saw company travellers use discount, restricted tickets for the morning flights and flexi-savers for the afternoon flights in case of schedule changes later in the day. The company also introduced minimum flying times when booking Business class tickets.
Using corporate negotiated rates and preferred hotels for accommodation: Access Captial Advisers' revised travel policy included the use of perferred hotel chains and guidelines for hotel rates. This ensured room rate averages dropped, while also helping to build loyalty with their preferred hotel supplier.
Implementing an online booking solution: The company adopted Corporate Traveller's online booking solution Selfbook to streamline their travel booking process, creating greater visibitlity of their travel spend data and achieve tighter compliance.
Leveraging corporate loyalty programs: Because Access Capital Advisers spend over $20,000 on domestic airfares, Corporate Traveller enrolled the company with Virgin Blue's Accelerate program. This ensures they receive free air travel credit, discounted lounge membership to Virgin Blue's The Lounge, Velocity points and status credits for Frequent Flyers.

What were the results?

At the start of 2009, Corporate Traveller's analysis indicated 95% of Access Capital Advisers' domestic airfare spend was with a premium domestic carrier, 47% of those airfares included fully-flexible tickets. The company was also spending 99% of its international airfare spend with one premium carrier and 97% of those airfares included Business class tickets. At this time, the company's average room rate was on average $271.

Travel analysis of the second half of 2009, following changes to their policy, showed a very different picture for Access Capital Advisers with a reduction in average ticket price of almost $100 and a 32% drop in airfare spend due to improved purchasing strategies. In the six months to December 2009, the company achieved savings of $30,000 on its domestic airfare spend through a change of policy to Best Fare of Day for outbound and a flexi-ticket for the return trip.

The company saved a further $98,000 by using an open skies policy for international airfares and booking more Premium Economy tickets. In addition, in the six month period to December 2009, the company's online uptake of Selfbook increased to 53%. Travel analysis also showed the company had reduced its average room rate to $242 in the second half of 2009.

What's ahead for Access Capital Advisers?

Corporate Traveller will be closely monitoring Access Capital Advisers' travel performance and ensuring the company continues to achieve value for money travel outcomes.

What does Access Capital Advisers say?

"Access Capital Advisers strives to achieve value for money for our clients whilst at the same time delivering superior investment returns. Deliberately working on reducing our travel spend whilst at the same time ensuring that the most efficient form of travel was undertaken has resulted in a material saving for the firm's clients without any loss in the quality or timeliness of service delivery. Working with Corporate Traveller throughout the 2009/10 year has delivered both the firm and its clients a meaningfully beneficial outcome."