Corporate Travel Management (TMC) is the call to action of managing a company’s strategic approach to travel (‘travel policy’), the negotiations with all vendors, day-to-day operation of the corporate travel program, as well as traveler saftey and security, credit-card management and expenses” (‘T&E’) portion of their data management.
Business Travel Management firms should not be misunderstood to the every-day traditional Travel Agency. While agencies provide the day-to-day travel services to companies in need of Business Travel Solutions, they are the performance arm of what the corporation has negotiated and became policy. More specifically, TMC decides on the class of service in which employees are granted to fly, negotiates corporate fares/rates with airlines and determines how corporate credit cards are to be used. The agency part on the other hand makes the actual reservations within the traveler’s need’s given by the corporation.
For many corporation’s T&E costs represent the second highest controllable annual expense, exceeded only by salary but include all costs incurred during travel such as staff and client meals, ground travel , gratuities, client gifts, supplies etc. moreover, this area often includes meeting management, traveler safety and security as well as credit card and overall travel data management.
The management of these costs are usually handled by a prestigious well-versed company like Crescor Travel a function which may be part of the Finance, HR, Procurement or Administrative Services Department.