ZS Associates’ multi-channel travel program

Justin Schuster: Welcome to the Travel Is a Human Emotion podcast. I could not be more excited to share with you that today I have two guests from ZS Associates. The first is Suzanne Boyan, global meetings and travel manager, and the second is Sarah Hayden, global travel lead at ZS Associates. I just have to be real with our audience.

We’ve had some technical difficulties trying to make this happen. We’re now on iPhones, and Sarah has graciously volunteered to move up to her bedroom, sitting on the floor in order to be close to the router, and we think we’ve got it nailed this time. I could not be more grateful to both of you, Suzanne and Sarah, for being patient with all the technical challenges, and I’m very excited to dive into this conversation.

Suzanne Boyan: Yep.

Justin Schuster: Suzanne, I was hoping I might kick things off with you and ask if you could give a quick overview of what ZS Associates does and how large the travel program is.

Suzanne Boyan: Absolutely. We’re a professional services firm which operates globally. We have over thirty-five offices in various regions, and our program is eighty million strong.

Justin Schuster: Quite a large program.

Suzanne Boyan: Yes.

Justin Schuster: Sarah, I wonder if I could ask you — among the reasons I was so excited to have ZS Associates on the podcast is because you have a very unique and special approach to managing travel. I believe you call this a multi-channel approach to travel management, where you provide both a corporate booking tool and you allow travelers to book directly with major airlines. Can you describe how this works in practice for folks who are unfamiliar?

Sarah Hayden: We do still have a TMC. We have an OBT in place. Those things are not going anywhere. We still have a large traveling population that enjoys working with the travel agents. They’re supported by administrative assistants or EAs.

As well as the online booking tool, that kind of marketplace of options — they enjoy that experience. We certainly have that enabled for them. We consider this the traditional route, or the more standardized way that corporate travel functions. Then we have enabled direct booking as well.

It started with United Airlines, and we’ve since expanded that to American, Delta, and Southwest. With United, American, and Delta, the direct booking enablement is through Traverse Travel, a division of ARC. They work with the airline to make sure our corporate rates appear when our ZSers log into their frequent flyer account with a given airline.

They get that negotiated rate that my team works so hard to secure. We get to see the data on the back end because it’s captured within Traverse’s ecosystem, and then it flows on to our duty of care provider. Whether you go the traditional route with a TMC or you want to go the direct route on an app on your phone with a given supplier, we still get access to our corporate rates.

We still capture the data on the back end for reporting, and you’re still covered for duty of care. It’s more of a choose-your-own-adventure kind of program.

Justin Schuster: Suzanne, let me ask you — where did the idea for this come from? What were the signals that you were seeing in the business that helped you decide to go down this path?

Suzanne Boyan: Absolutely. Two things were happening concurrently. The first was, being a professional services firm, our clients were able to negotiate much better hotel rates than I was able to negotiate, and I was a team of one at the time. Even now, our clients are able to negotiate much better hotel rates than us as a team of four on the travel side.

That’s just due to volume, right? We have six-week projects, three-month projects. It does not matter. They have way more people traveling close to their offices than we do. We had a lot of leakage in the hotel space. Like I said, concurrently, what was happening was we were getting a lot of people, including our CFO — who was my boss’s boss at the time — who was doing a lot of comparison shopping and finding lower rates on direct supplier websites and on the OTAs.

It was actually our CFO at the time who said, “I can find something cheaper.” In a panic, I said, “No problem. We will figure this out. We will absolutely get you that through our TMC.” He said, “No, no, no, that is a waste of time. What I want you to do is figure out a way for me to just book it direct.”

I said, “Okay.” We actually ended up solving two issues that were happening at the same time. One was that people were finding lower rates on united.com versus the TMC, and the second was that we needed to solve this leakage problem that we had with hotels. The solution we found in 2017 was Traxo.

What they started, Traverse, as Sarah mentioned, ran with, and so we were able to expand the direct booking program.

Justin Schuster: Well, this is great. Rather than having to pitch the idea to leadership, it actually came down from leadership, and you had the buy-in straight away.

Suzanne Boyan: We did. Wait till you figure it out.

Justin Schuster: That’s fantastic.

Sarah Hayden: That’s good.

Justin Schuster: Let me ask you both — what do you feel are the pros and cons of allowing travelers to book direct? It seems like it might be a bit more complicated for you on the back end, but it offers great choice and flexibility for the travelers.

Sarah Hayden: I would say that’s certainly a pro, and it’s something we hear loud and clear on our annual traveler survey.

We do ask them about their experience — the traditional route, and if you book direct, what has your experience been there? It’s a lot of data that we collect on the back end, and loud and clear we hear from our travelers, “Don’t take away direct booking. In fact, expand it as much as you can to bring in even more suppliers.”

Those that enjoy that very independent, self-managed type of approach to their business travel, they love being able to go that route — book from an app on their phone, easily expense it through an app on your phone, again, into our expense management tool. If you have a disruption or you need to make a change to your trip, again, it’s all done through your phone, through an app.

Of course, this could all be web-based as well. They like the ease of being able to book direct. The flip side to that is the cons we have found from this experience: there’s a bit of a learning curve. I think a lot of our ZSers, and maybe even more so our tenured ZSers, whether from within the company or just within their own industry, they’re used to the more traditional TMC, working on an OBT to book their business trips.

The concept of being able to go to a supplier directly and see our negotiated rate — you could actually book your flight through the app, whereas before you may never have been allowed to do that through that program. We enable it. I think that piece of the change management is a little bit of a hurdle for them, to just get used to the fact that we’ve given them this menu of options.

I think, second to that, a lot of our road warriors are still supported by administrative assistants. With direct booking, they may love to go direct to their favorite airline because they have status with them. “Let me just do it through my app. I can do it quickly. I get the level of service I want.”

Then your admin does lose a little bit of visibility into what you’re booking outside of their purview, and then how to expense it on the back end. We’re still working on more of the automations and how to get that full visibility to the administrative assistants, to still give that level of support that they are expected to.

That’s a little bit of a gap, I would say, a little bit of a blind spot for my team to work on, certainly. By and large, this part of our program has been a huge success, and it’s not going anywhere.

Suzanne Boyan: If I could just add onto that, if that’s okay, Justin.

Justin Schuster: Yes.

Suzanne Boyan: I think we’ve always maintained, Sarah and I, that no one’s going to sell a United ticket better than United, and no one’s going to sell an American ticket better than American.

You can head down the path of all of the vendors. They are in the business of making revenue, and they’re very good at selling their product. I think the indirect channels are getting there, and Spotnana was a huge leap in that, so well done. For a long time there were no other tools that could handle what that consolidation could look like, to make it such a user-friendly tool.

This was really bred out of necessity, to the earlier point that I was making. I think there’s something there — people want to get the best experience possible, the leisure experience in their work life.

Justin Schuster: Well, absolutely, for sure. The number one complaint we often hear travel managers report is hearing from the travelers, “I found it cheaper somewhere else.”

Oh, sure. I know this is something we’ve worked really hard to solve as a challenge in the industry, and ahead of that curve, you found another way to get there, and it’s working really, really well for you.

It’s wonderful. I wanted to ask — how does policy work in this context? Are you able to enforce policy when people book direct?

Sarah Hayden: At present, we have a travel and expense policy, but we don’t really have a heavy-handed mandated program in the sense that other travel managers might experience with their program.

Lowest logical economy airfare, standard king or queen hotel room, standard size car — the base level for what you’d choose for travel. Within the direct channels, you can still see basic economy as a fare type. I guarantee you, you make the mistake one time of booking basic economy, and you don’t make that mistake again.

While it’s still visible — same way it’s still visible within our instance of Spotnana, Spotnana blocks it out so it can’t be booked — when you go direct, again, it’s lowest logical economy fares that you book. Right now, I have not found that the suppliers have built in good policy guardrails on the back end of direct bookings, or the direct booking experience.

I can foresee that coming in the future as this continues to expand, more companies adopting this type of booking method, as that need arises. ZS also operates under this: we hire really intelligent people to make good decisions and make good financial decisions on behalf of not only our firm, but also the clients that we do work on behalf of.

In turn, we’re making really smart travel decisions when we go to book our business trips.

Justin Schuster: Sarah, let me ask you — how are you pulling the data together on the back end? It sounds like some of that’s through Traverse and some of that is through Traxo. Does payments play a role? How does it work?

Sarah Hayden: We’re pulling in some direct booking data from our connection with Traverse. The rest of it’s getting captured from our Traxo partnership, their email filtering and parsing capabilities, and then obviously direct bookings, anything through the agency or through Spotnana, gets captured in one go.

My team, we are actually building an in-house dashboard on Power BI that’s going to pull in all these different data connections from all these different sources that don’t really talk to each other, into one data lake and into a platform that my team can then use to do some program analytics, some spend analytics.

We’re going to give access to our senior leadership so they can see where things are trending. ESG metrics are going to get pulled into here, internal meeting spend. Something that just doesn’t exist in the industry — so in true ZS fashion, why not just build it yourself? We’re doing exactly that. We have that full view of our travel and meetings programs globally.

With that, as you mentioned — expense and payment — yes, we are going to pull in SAP and Ember state as well, so we get that full picture of spend and costs around business travel.

Justin Schuster: I love how much you both are pioneers and problem solvers. No technical challenge is too great. There’s always a solution and a will to find a way.

Sarah Hayden: It’s true ZS culture: when there’s a problem, no one else is going to fix it, ask a ZSer, we’ll fix it for you.

Justin Schuster: Amazing. Sarah, we had a great conversation at the Garner family meeting, and one of the things I was curious about is understanding how travelers choose their own adventure.

Sarah Hayden: Mm-hmm.

Justin Schuster: Who tends to gravitate towards using Spotnana and Direct Travel as the TMC, as that route, versus folks who like to book directly with the airlines? Are there patterns in the data that you see?

Sarah Hayden: When we take a look at our global spend, which we’ve just done actually in the last month or so.

We look at our global spend over the last year. It’s not just a year-to-year comparison, but it’s also looking even five years back, and what do those trends look like year over year, and what are the patterns that emerge from the data? We’re finding, when you slice it a couple different ways, we see those that are taking international trips, especially multi-stop trips, they go the more traditional route working with the TMC.

They might want to go through Spotnana if they feel comfortable using a booking tool for those complicated itineraries. They love having the support of an agent who knows those routes and who knows those ticketing instructions. Whereas you might have someone else who’s taking a very simple domestic route.

It’s the same route they take every week anyway to go visit their client. They’re just going to book direct. They’re not going to go that more traditional route. Again, that’s why we’ve enabled this in our program — to give everyone options. You don’t have to stick with one path for every single business trip you book.

You can do a blend of both. If you slice the data by route type, I think you see a divergence there, whether it’s international or domestic. I think it’s interesting to see a story coming out of a generational difference and preferences that come out of the data: our younger generations who are newer to the workforce, they’re used to being on their phone and living their lives through their phone every day.

Why not do your business trips the same way? They’re very comfortable getting in the app and booking and managing their trips that way. Whereas more tenured individuals who’ve been in the industry for a long time, they maybe don’t have the capacity to book and manage their trips, so they rely on their administrative assistant so they can stay productive fulfilling client work.

We’ve enabled that for them as well. It’s generational. It’s just within their own preferences, whether they want to go direct or traditional, what type of trip, what you’re routing. It’s interesting to see the stories that come out of our data.

Justin Schuster: One of the things that I’ve seen as an emerging pattern in the travel industry is that it seems like, through more direct integrations, there’s greater support for what is sometimes called omni-channel servicing.

Sarah Hayden: Mm-hmm.

Justin Schuster: The traveler can book through an online booking tool, they can make a change with the airline, or they can make a change through their travel agency or the booking tool, and all parties are kept in sync. Do you think that the future of the travel industry is going to include this ability to book everywhere?

I can get serviced anywhere, and I can book anywhere, and all parties stay in sync. Is that the trend that you think will continue over time?

Suzanne Boyan: Yes. I think that is something that Sarah and I are pushing for in the industry together. Not just with Direct Travel and Spotnana. We know that you guys already have that ability with one carrier.

We need it to be with all. We’re also asking — the airlines are the ones that have to also enable it, right? All parties have to work together to get this right. Ultimately, that is where we need to head as an industry: it should not matter where I book. What matters is who can help me when I need the help.

When there’s a large system-wide outage, it quite candidly can’t be the airlines. They are not staffed for ops, but the travel agency is. If I book direct and something happens, I want to know that I can go to my travel agency, and they can see that and help me get from point A to point B, and back to point A, ideally back to my family.

Justin Schuster: Let me shift gears a little bit and ask — what are some of the other areas of innovation that you’re excited about this year?

Sarah Hayden: I think we’re going to see a large emergence of AI truly coming to fruition. I think it’s been a buzzword in the industry for a long time, in the same way that we heard NDC was a buzzword for so long, and sustainability. We love to grab onto these buzzwords, and sometimes they actually come to fruition and something comes from them, and other times you just kind of float off to the side and you forget about them, and that’s okay too.

I really do believe AI is going to revolutionize this industry, and I think we’re at a bit of a pivotal moment where some suppliers are feeling the pressure to become innovative, bring something new to stay relevant, and to keep their place and importance within the industry.

I think specifically travel agencies, TMCs, they have a big role to play, and so really learning how to adopt AI within their business operations, how they can take those innovations and market it to the customers, is going to put them on a whole different level. If they don’t embrace AI and what’s coming in that space, they might get left behind, and I don’t want that for anyone.

I think there’s a lot of opportunity that’s going to come out of what AI can do for us.

Justin Schuster: Suzanne, same thoughts for you? Is AI—

Suzanne Boyan: Same thoughts. I’m really excited about what AI can do, and I think it’s — again, another huge focus for Sarah and I within our travel programs — is seeing how we can leverage AI agents, not just from a program management standpoint, but from a traveling standpoint too.

A lot of the trips, they used to go to Google Flights, and now they’re going to ChatGPT or Copilot — we’re big supporters of Copilot, use that as our example. Wouldn’t it be great if that agent could then, after a trip, write back and say, “Hey, how was that hotel?” That’s the on-the-ground, real-time reference that I think could really help future travelers.

When I go to book to New York or something like that, then Sarah, I’m getting Sarah’s real-time review of that hotel, versus trusting strangers on the internet that I don’t know, who don’t understand what CS standard means. There’s a lot of potential with AI, not just within programs, or between B2B, but truly from us, from B2C, and our clients are our people.

Justin Schuster: I love that thought. Can we replace the post-trip survey with AI asking questions in a more conversational way that actually yields better insights?

Suzanne Boyan: 100%.

Justin Schuster: Well, this is the Travel Is a Human Emotion podcast. I think with all the technical issues, we’ve definitely experienced a whole range of human emotions in the course of recording this episode.

Let me ask you — when you reflect on the connection between travel and human emotions, what stands out most for you?

Sarah Hayden: You can’t forget about the human. I think this podcast speaks to that. In our roles and our industry, we talk so much about the data. We hear AI is emerging in the industry, and all these other components.

At the end of the day, the human is the end user. They are the ultimate customer, and we can’t lose sight of them, and we can’t bury them under all of these technicalities that come through. I think there’s going to be a lot of great innovation coming forward in this industry, but we don’t want too much big brother involved.

We want to keep the human and the experience at the core of this, and we can’t lose sight of that either. Just use the technology to enhance the human experience — I think that’s what’s most important.

Suzanne Boyan: I think I already touched a little bit on it, but it’s one thing to get your travelers from point A to point B — we also want to get them back.

When EROPS happens, that’s when we see travel at its worst, unfortunately. It’s also just an inevitability, especially with the way and how volatile our world is today. Just reminding myself and my team: our people are the reason we’re here. The reason any travel manager is in their job is that is their clientele, and we need to take care of them in whatever way that means for that company.

For ZS, it means reducing the friction as much as possible and providing them options and tools. I understand that that might not be the case for all companies. It’s truly getting down to the core of what the culture is at a company. Travel is so special. I hope it never goes away.

Justin Schuster: Thank you both for sharing your thoughts, and for fighting through the technical issues, and for joining me today. It was a really wonderful conversation.

Sarah Hayden: Oh, thanks, Justin.

Suzanne Boyan: Thank you.