When Chapman & Carter teamed up with the Office Management Group to survey office managers, EAs and PAs about how they handle business travel, we expected the usual complaints to top the list: policy confusion, endless approvals, piles of admin.
They came nowhere near the top.
The real headache is last-minute changes
When asked to rank where they experience the most friction when managing travel, respondents put last-minute changes clearly ahead of everything else, well ahead of traveller compliance and the approvals process. Administration and duty of care - the things you'd assume would be the biggest drag - actually ranked as the least troublesome areas.
The pain in business travel is disruption rather than paperwork: a flight delayed, a meeting moved, a trip that needs rebooking an hour before someone is due to leave.
As one respondent put it, what would help most is:
"Text/WhatsApp travel disruption intelligence."
Another simply wanted:
"Alerts if travel disruption."
Why this matters more than it sounds
For most people who took part in the survey, travel isn't their main job. Around 48% said arranging travel is something they do only occasionally, on top of a much broader role, and most spend just 1-3 hours a week on it.
That's exactly why a sudden change is so disruptive: it's an unplanned fire to put out in the middle of a day that already has plenty else going on. Nobody has slack reserved for it, because on most days it doesn't happen.
It also explains why respondents ranked reliability and consistency as by far the most important quality in a travel supplier, well ahead of technology, sustainability or even personal service. When something changes at the last minute, what people want is someone who picks up the phone and sorts it out.
What we recommend
Based on these findings, here's what we'd suggest if disruption is the thing keeping you up at night before a trip:
- Put a single, named point of contact in place for changes, rather than a generic inbox or ticketing queue. When a flight is cancelled at 6am, "someone will get back to you" is not good enough. Know exactly who to call.
- Ask your current supplier how they handle disruption, not just how they handle bookings. Most sales conversations focus on rates and platforms. Push for specifics: what happens the moment something changes, and how fast?
- Be careful about investing in booking technology at the expense of support. Our respondents ranked technology and reporting well below reliability, and a slicker app will not help if there is no one to call.
Chapman & Carter works this way by design: a single, consistent point of contact for your travel programme, so a change of plan means one phone call.
Want to talk it through?
If last-minute changes are a recurring headache for your organisation, we'd be glad to take a look at how your travel is currently managed and where the quick wins are.