The True Cost of Travel

Now more than ever, organizations are critical of their travel budgets. Determining the seemingly mythical “true cost of a travel” has long been a goal of TMCs, travel managers and accounting teams everywhere. The mental gymnastics, endless expense report sorting and sometimes even guess work has allowed us to get close to this number. Still, for those obsessed with the travel experience like Fox is, the true cost of travel has always seemed like nirvana — far, far away — until now. Fox has built an integration for our proprietary Cognition business intelligence platform that allows us to calculate this number for our clients.

Travel data runs through a multitude platforms belonging to travel vendors, TMC’s and organizations’ internal accounting systems, and much of the expense reporting is left to the traveler to keep accurate expenses. Furthermore, they need to track this during their trip, on top of the stress of making their flights on time, adjusting to new time zones and executing on the job they are being sent to perform.  Cognition allows clients to combine TMC data on air, car and hotel with the other expenses reported by travelers to give clients the until now elusive true cost of a travel.

We are currently implementing this integration with our first client to move forward with our new solution.

“The client wants to determine the total cost of a single trip, not just air, car and hotel, to determine the total value proposition of the travel,” said Fox’s chief information officer, Sam Hilgendorf. “They also want to identify the transactions that are booked outside of their travel program, where they are losing out on negotiated rates or services.”

Fox’s data analytics team thrives on partnering with clients to uncover hidden opportunities to better analyze our clients’ data. This new joining of external sources with our internal data warehouse to determine the true cost of travel can be customized per client and built to meet your individual organization’s needs. Travel managers have told us that they may not always be aware of what indicators might provide the most value, Fox’s data analytics team can provide recommendations based on the challenge or challenges a client faces.

The chart below is a real example of one of our client’s travel spend.  At a glance you can identify the common travel expenses we are familiar with, but also see the expenses that may not always come to mind.

Especially with new challenges and the fluctuating business climate, Fox has proven we can adapt to evolving client needs. We soar together with you and continue to innovate, educate and bring next-level visibility to your corporate travel program.