ITM has today released the findings of its 2024 ITM Trending Survey, which for the first time asked both buyers and suppliers for their insight.
The survey, which is supported by American Express Global Business Travel, found that buyers’ top four priorities for 2024 remain unchanged from last year’s results, with online booking tool (OBT) optimisation ranking top.
Duty of care, budget control and sustainable practice all followed collectively in second place.
Also sharing equal second place is ‘ensuring access to full content’, which moves into the top five (up from sixth last year) overtaking traveller wellbeing.
The survey, which was conducted over two weeks at the end of November, sought the views of more than 100 corporate travel buyers, managers and heads of travel, with a mix of global, EMEA, UK and Ireland responsibilities.
For the first time ITM also polled more than 200 supplier members to gain insights into their understanding of buyer priorities, and the challenges facing different sectors.
Suppliers were asked to rank what they believed would be buyers’ top priorities for 2024. Suppliers selected budget control as the number one priority, and placed OBT optimisation in sixth place.
Buyers were, however, aligned with suppliers on other key priorities such as sustainable practice, duty of care and ensuring full content access.
The majority of buyers (75 per cent) also said that access to full content/NDC will be the biggest challenge they face in managing travel in 2024 and more than half (66 per cent) are not confident that they will have access to the airline content they need in 2024.
In terms of OBTs, most buyers are dissatisfied with fulfilment across several content-related areas such as displaying non-GDS content (75 per cent), capturing off-programme bookings (70 per cent), rail content (73 per cent), and seamless air/rail policy inclusion.
Scott Davies CEO, ITM said: “What is coming through loud and clear from the buyer perspective is access to full content, and their reliance on OBTs to deliver and fulfil that content.
“Yet buyers are clearly still facing issues with their OBT, hence OBT optimisation remains as the number one priority. Last year, the reasons were primarily driven by the challenges of managing the return to travel post-Covid; now that has shifted to focus on dissatisfaction with OBTs’ ability to deliver what buyers really need in today’s business travel environment.”
According to the survey, sustainability requirements are also set to increase with 52 per cent of respondents saying that suppliers must comply with carbon emissions reporting (up from 39 per cent in 2023), while 35 per cent of buyers require science-based targets (up from 23 per cent last year).
When asked about RFPs, the survey results show there is a lower propensity for buyers to go to full tender for their TMC (19 per cent). However, the accommodation sector will see 45 per cent of buyers go to full RFP. For air programmes, the preferred approach is targeted negotiations (43 per cent).
Suppliers said challenges they face include rising costs due to inflation, global economic uncertainty and tighter corporate travel budgets as well as talent shortages, recruitment and training new staff.
They also noted the challenges of access to full content, not just NDC, as well as sustainability data requirements.
According to the report, suppliers are also investing heavily in the corporate travel sector – 71 per cent have increased their investment versus a year ago, and 58 per cent have grown their commercial headcount.
Davies added: “It’s encouraging to see that suppliers in general are aligned in terms of understanding buyer priorities as they included the same issues in their top five. However there was a discrepancy in the way they ranked them, with suppliers assuming that price would come top for buyers.
"The key takeaway for suppliers should be that it’s not all about cost. Buyers have a much more challenging and wide-ranging remit influencing their priorities.”