When it comes to data mining and collecting all of the information available to review compliance and leverage travel spend, once a completely integrated tool is developed and proven, we will still conduct our analysis the manual way. The primary pieces that states have access to is the back end reporting provided by the travel agency and the credit card transaction reports. Oregon also has access to car rental information from our contracted car rental provider.
Gathering airline and car rental spend is easy, just contact the TMC or car rental contractor. The challenge that we face is gathering the hotel spend, especially the instate hotel spend where there is no air travel involved. Since only ten percent of the states travelers use the corporate travel charge card, we can only estimate based on that spend. The easiest thing would be to make use of the card mandatory for all travel spend, but with collective bargaining agreements and the tightening credit market, this has become impossible.
Oregon currently uses permissive agreements with instate properties who honor per-diem rates for state travelers. Without accurate spend data, it is challenging to enter into actual agreements with negotiated savings. This provides a disservice to both the properties and the Oregon tax payer, by not being able to capture savings where possible and guaranteeing a minimum number of room nights to a property.
Once a complete end to end and automated solution is developed, it will certainly maximize time and provide savings to the government travel program.
by Tim Hay