Best Innovation in a Travel Programme
Tuija Snellman,
Travel & Expense Manager,
Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE
Tuija embodies the principle that an online strategy involves much more than implementing an online booking tool. Her use of mobile communications has enhanced the traveller experience and driven high levels of compliance to the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation’s travel policy.
When Tuija Snellman started as travel manager at the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation in 2003 there was a manual travel and expenses programme and “people were doing their own thing”. There is now an automated booking and expense management system and Tuija is using the system not only for saving costs directly but for reducing carbon emissions and for enhancing the traveller experience.
Tuija represents travel on the organisation’s Environment Steering Committee. The Committee looks at ways in which all the company’s different departments, from facilities to engineering, catering to travel, can waste less and reduce its carbon emissions. Tuija applies the criteria set by the group for suppliers as part of her sourcing process. As she puts it, “Hotels have to fulfil certain criteria to go onto the programme.
“Travellers make their arrangements themselves through the tool and they are free to choose what they want – so long as it is in the online booking system.”
Confining representation in the online system to those suppliers that meet environmental criteria has helped the Finnish television company decrease its carbon footprint.
Tuija uses the online booking system not just for automated travel and expense reimbursement. The tool also collects both agency and card data to produce comprehensive management information. It also drives the company’s environmental policy and also enhances the traveller experience.
She has created customised messages for use via mobile communications. Travel itineraries flagged from bookings made in the tool are followed up with city-specific information to help travellers once they arrive at their destinations. For example, most travellers to Geneva are going to meetings at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Upon arrival at Geneva airport, they receive a message on their mobiles telling them how to collect free bus tickets, where the right bus stop is at the terminal and at which bus stop they should alight for the EBU. Those travelling to Stockholm receive information about the Arlanda Express’s schedule and directions to its departure platforms.
Mobile communications are also used for the conventional traveller alerts about any possible disruption to plans. The system also clocks when travellers leave Finland and when they return so that their foreign travel allowances can be accurately calculated.
According to Tuija, travellers have been so happy with the information and alerts that compliance to the booking tool has gone up from 84 to 96.3% since the plan was implemented.
She says, “We are now saving money and emissions, but we are looking at new ways to go forward. We could measure the environmental credentials of hotels more accurately, for example.”
Tuija says the mobile communications cannot be used to make or change bookings because of the inability to access the corporate intranet but that this will be possible in the future.
“The day isn’t so far away for us to get access to the booking systems,” she says.
Tuija Snellman’s innovative use of mobile communications has saved her company admin time, money and carbon emissions. And her travellers are happy. It is innovation like this which makes her stand out as a winner of a European Travel Buyer award.
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