Speaking at ‘Business Travel Market’ in London today, Dominic O’Regan, KDS’s solutions consultancy director, urged organisations to ensure total trip costs are calculated correctly and weighed against the benefit of the travel.

“Right now,” said O’Regan, “when the economic pressures on every business are so intense, it is more important than ever before to avoid unnecessary – and unnecessarily expensive – travel. The first step in that process is to know the likely total cost of a trip before the travel plans are approved. Are you going to spend more travelling than you will generate when you arrive? I cannot stress enough the importance of ROI in modern business travel.

“Monitoring costs such as flights and hotels can be a straightforward task but, all too often, factors such as travel management company (TMC) fees, lodge card spend and incidentals can be overlooked or forgotten. You only realise the actual total cost of the trip after the event, by when it’s too late to do anything. Perhaps you never truly realise the total trip cost at all. If you want to stop wasting money, you need comprehensive, reliable, easily-accessible and well-presented data from the very start of the travel management process.”

O’Regan concluded: “KDS’s fully-integrated technology helps corporate and TMC clients save money throughout the travel management process, including online self-booking and automated expense processing. We’re the only company to have built a truly unified end-to-end T&E solution from the outset, focused on our customers’ needs, and delivering real and tangible ROI.”

A conference and exhibition aimed at European travel buyers, ‘Business Travel Market’ concludes today at the ExCeL London convention centre. The two-day event attracts over 3,500 participants and around 100 exhibitors, from more than 20 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.