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Travel will look very different at the pharmaceutical company UCB when the restrictions abate, as employees are interviewed when booking a trip without an overnight stay.

The decision to question their motives comes from the company’s aim to make meetings more meaningful and to reduce its CO2 emissions. It could backfire, however, as experts warn that the trend could result in employees tampering with the system.

UCB’s business travel volume fell 90 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. Like most companies, it has been adapted for virtual meetings.

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Advito, the advisory arm of its corporate travel agency BCD Travel, is now asking a new question in the company’s online booking tool and for agency bookings. When staff book a one-day trip, a pop-up appears: Are you sure you can’t do this through a team or zoom meeting?

Geert Behets, Spend Tour Guiding, Global Travel and Meetings, UCB, and speak on a Festive Road webinar.

“The first screen you will see is, Have you considered whether the trip you planned is an essential trip,” said Geert Behets, director of travel, global travel and meetings at UCB. “We want people to start thinking: what is essential travel? Which trip brings value? “

At the same time, UCB is marking these targeted meetings to become a more sustainable company. Advito is developing a dashboard that deals with emissions from travel.

Advito offers a platform called GATE4 that allows customers to track emissions from air, hotel, train and car journeys in order to get a better picture of the environmental impact of their program and determine where meaningful changes can be made.

“We want to make people think and combine this with our environmental goals. UCB aims to become carbon neutral by 2030, ”added Behets, who spoke during an online webinar for consultancy Festive Road. “We want to take this opportunity to keep the momentum going.”

New pandemic patterns

It is not the first example of a coronavirus shaped by a growing conscience of climate change and leaving its mark.

“I will be traveling less for longer. For example, if I go to Singapore for Davos, I’ll not only do that, I’ll spend more time there, ”said Sir Martin Sorrell, frequent flyer and former CEO of advertising giant WPP discussing plans to participate in the World Economic Forum (due to Covid-19 -Bearings have since been canceled).

In July last year, the CEO of another pharmaceutical company had forecast the decline of the one-customer business trip.

According to a consultant, however, pitfalls can arise when “blunt” tools are jammed and used.

“Something as simple as challenging the booker when a trip doesn’t have an overnight stay might help address the challenge, but honestly feels a little dull,” said Guy Sneglar.

He added that he saw tailored and more specific guidelines to achieve the same goal. This may include asking bookers to provide the reason for the trip at the beginning of the booking process and asking the user to consider a virtual meeting when attempting to book a trip for a day trip if the purpose is is specified as an internal meeting.

“Support this with an approval process that requires a stricter approval level when booking – – and of course make sure the traveler knows, ”he added.

In the meantime, those employees who long to take to the streets will find ways to circumvent bans on day trips.

“The same-day travel restriction isn’t new and there is a risk that people will say it takes two days when one would be enough,” said independent advisor Chris Pouney.

Travel managers can then find that once the constraints wear off, costs rise quickly.

“It’s not difficult to imagine arranging an early morning meeting. So you would have to travel the night before and stay in a hotel or add a number of those meetings that I am near you may not have a specific purpose or sufficient value, ”added Sneglar.

Timing is everything

With most international organizations maintaining their travel bans, there is still some time to think about it.

According to UCB’s Behets, the departments would have to define important meetings and travel themselves. In the future, however, travel managers could be brought in to help define what constitutes a worthwhile meeting.

From a sales perspective, presenting in front of a large potential sales opportunity could well be the definition of a worthwhile trip.

“The urgency is not immediate, but we want people to think about it,” he said. “We obviously expect this to work, but we won’t see until people start traveling again.”

According to a recent industry survey, three in four (74 percent) of respondents to buyers and procurers belonging to the Global Business Travel Association feel that their employees are “ready” or “very willing” to do business in the current environment to travel.

The results are the most positive since the beginning of the pandemic, with increasing optimism, the association noted.

“I think the one-day trip overall is likely to decline as executives try to align with the sustainability goals and ensure that travel is truly viewed as valuable. However, if the trip has a real purpose, it will continue.” said Paul Tilstone, managing partner of Festive Road.

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