We were recently challenged by the client to deliver a savings initiative for their travel management programme. Gray Dawes arranged a series of meetings with the client in order to detail the areas we could deliver costs savings. Such as a project of this nature, we made sure it became a joint venture to ensure the client was comfortable with any changes we were looking to explore.

After working with Investec we managed to pinpoint an area where we could offer significant savings without impacting any service levels across their contract. We noticed that a lot of their long-haul flights were being booked in a relatively short timeframe before the flight date (240 flights booked between 1-20 days before travel).

As part of the negotiated rates we had delivered to Investec’s travel programme, they would receive greater savings if they booked earlier in advance. We conducted a benchmarking exercise comparing their ‘last minute’ booked flights vs flights booked between 14-21 on their negotiated rates.

We embarked on a number of training session with Investec’s key travel bookers showing live examples of their booking patterns, this included train the trainer sessions so that best practice could be shared across the organisation.

This method enabled us to focus on reasons for late bookings, better diary management vs actually last minute travel which cannot be avoided in the business environment that Investec operate within. We are pleased to say we delivered a near on 50% saving
on long haul spend by putting focus on purchasing behaviour.

This has now resulted in the majority of all long haul tickets being purchased 14-21+ days with the biggest gain seen in 21+ window which truly helped in realising a yearly saving on long haul business class fares of over £80k.