The federal government has taken on monumental tasks implementing the DTS system and ETS systems, and I commend DoD and GSA for their actions. Surprisingly, although the systems have been in place for many years now, my experience has been that neither group has been able to obtain the type of management reports necessary to effectively alter traveler behavior or leverage their purchasing power during negotiations.
As a simple example, let’s take the FedRooms program. Currently DoD does not participate in the program. Therefore the FedRooms rates, according to GSA’s FedRooms manager, are not even loaded into the DTS system for display to DoD travelers. On the ETS side of the house, while FedRooms rates (XVU code) are displayed, they are displayed with up to 20 other hotel rates as returned from the GDS, including the government rate (GOV code). This tends to confuse travelers who end up logging out, calling the hotel directly, and booking the government rate. Currently the FedRooms program has a paltry 2% adoption rate.
So, while DoD and GSA have had the systems in place to capture travel data for 10 and 6 years respectively, they have yet to take the next logical step to effectively manage their travel programs.
By Ted Schuerman
Dear Ted Schuerman,
The much bigger story to the lack of penetration of FedRooms into the government space is: Why and who is blocking it? The answer is as usual, follow the money….
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