International Travel Ups Friction

BTN's Traveler Happiness survey showed that the more international travel a company's employee does every year, the more challenging it becomes for the company to produce a positive traveler experience. Employees whose international trip volume edges past 20 percent reported one of the lowest overall Traveler Happiness Index scores of any group of travelers in BTN's study, at 51.

Personal Safety

Personal safety not only was among the three highest priorities for all international travelers, it also was an area where many felt a gap in program support, especially in terms of pre-trip travel advisories about serious incidents. This problem was most pronounced for those that travel abroad the most.

Traveler safety and security support runs much deeper than messaging, and several international travelers BTN interviewed cited political unrest, hijacked flights and sexual harassment. Lack of training in how to react left them feeling vulnerable. An HR professional was in Cairo in 2011 during then-President Hosni Mubarak's ouster. With Internet and cellphone services shut down, his credit cards were useless. The company had advised him not to carry cash to Egypt, but he brought it anyway and used cash bribes to get to the airport. While his company regularly briefed employees on travel safety strategies prior to foreign travel, he said, "somebody dropped the ball; they should have told us not to fly to Egypt. It took us three days to get evacuated." He now registers with an embassy before traveling internationally, as this helps with evacuations. His company, in turn, established a team to improve its travel crisis response.

A 31-year-old events director who travels internationally 10 times a year is new to traveler safety and security measures. "Until recently … I'd never had a briefing on any of that stuff. There were no updates on what one might expect to happen in a [particular] country or know-how to deal with [emergency] situations," she said. "In the past nine months, [the company] brought in International SOS, so [now] they do security training and briefings for countries and what to do in hostage situations." However, she feels her company is still behind when it comes to women's safety. Her company has many trainee programs for recent graduates, which means women in their early 20s are "expected to travel by themselves or with one other person, often a male colleague, and expected to interact with people who can be inappropriate and make them feel uncomfortable," she said. "[The company] could do a lot more to prepare women or people in general for the realities of client-facing roles."

Facebook traveler security is addressing issues like these by rolling out training to all employees who travel, and talking candidly about the concerns of women travelers, first-time travelers and LGBTQ travelers among others. Facebook does not limit its education to members of particular groups. "It's not just educating the traveler," said global travel manager Erin Wilk. "It's about providing an informed environment where travelers and managers can come together on concerns."

Mission Critical: Internet Connectivity

Employees who travel internationally more than 20 percent of the time were the most dissatisfied with access to reliable Internet and data connections, according to the survey. Though access has improved with inflight Wi-Fi, not all companies are willing to reimburse for it. Hotel Wi-Fi, meanwhile, can be spotty, particularly during international travel. And ad hoc mobile data connections can be expensive. A pharmaceuticals project manager who travels internationally at least 25 times a year said she'd be more productive if her company simply provided a Wi-Fi dongle. "If I want to do anything on the Internet, I have to use my [personal] phone Wi-Fi. They reimburse me, but it's a pain because I may run out of data [for personal use later]," she said.

Foresight for Wi-Fi & More

Microsoft has introduced a travel community tool on the Tripism platform whereby corporate travelers can rate hotels, restaurants and other local market suppliers based on firsthand experiences. That advice can include details like Wi-Fi reliability and other priorities like onsite fitness facilities, hotels' proximity to public transportation, restaurant recommendations and other information. One drawback: The community exists outside the booking tool.

Other solutions have come to the market, too. Expedia incorporated RouteHappy's flight sentiment data in 2014 that reviews seat amenities; Egencia got it in 2015. After Deem acquired hospitality data-cruncher Olset last year, Deem Work Fource pulls more sentiment and amenity info into its booking process. Meanwhile, Kayak co-founder Paul English launched his lightweight mobile corporate travel booking tool, Lola, which also pulls in external sentiment data. Managed travel announcements will come soon from Lola.

Expense Reimbursement

Organizations can stand to do more to ease the process for travelers, according to BTN's Traveler Happiness survey. Of the three travelers with whom BTN spoke whose companies migrated from manual expense reporting to Concur Expense, two said their processes had improved. "It makes it much more convenient. I no longer fear losing receipts, and I don't have to scan and staple [receipts]. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle," one traveler said. The third admitted she could be better about photographing receipts as she goes along, rather than waiting three to six months to file expenses, which results in an entire evening of personal time to submit them.

Improvements also could start not with the expense tool but with corporate card decisions. For example, the pharmaceuticals project manager said an administrator books her flights and hotels. This eliminated her need to charge big-ticket items to her personal credit card and removed line items from her expense report. Finance may call the shots for corporate cards, but travel managers could influence the decision.

Companies also can assess receipt policies. A government employee who travels mostly domestically said a per diem and the requirement to submit receipts only for charges over $75 ease her expense reporting process. Plus, less stringent receipt policies can benefit not just the traveler but also the company. Siemens Corp. recently revised its U.S. receipt policy to a $75 floor for corporate card purchases and $25 otherwise. The new policy reduced receipts handled by 1.3 million annually and is projected to save the company 30 man-years in labor every year.

Frequent International Travelers

All international travelers were dissatisfied with their access to memberships or tools that allowed them to skip lines or bypass typical travel processes, such as airport security and hotel front desks. Again, more frequent international travelers were the most dissatisfied, according to BTN's survey. Global Entry's $100 price tag, which covers five years and automatically qualifies travelers for TSA Precheck, could be a small price to pay for a consistently upgraded experience.

The most pronounced factor leading to dissatisfaction among heavily international travelers was a lack of compensatory time for traveling over holidays and weekends. They rated its importance at 4.3 out of 5 but pegged their companies' ability to deliver at just 2.5. Likewise, they ranked the need for their companies to support their well-being and productivity while traveling at 4.2, but they rated their companies' performance at only 3 out of 5.

Traveler Perceptions on a Scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (good)