ETS or DTS after the federal agency chooses an Electronic Travel System it must interface with the TMC or Travel Agency. One may notice that there are many travel companies listed on the TSS schedule offering accommodated services.
Know that each of these agencies has gone through a fairly rigorous test to be available for use by federal agency states credibility these companies. Their financial health, the evaluation of the staff, key employees, and their ability to know their clients’ needs and work with them on a daily basis.
If the purpose of the ETS or DTS system is to provide a seamless approval and reservation system that can operate quickly and efficiently all while providing rapid reimbursement to the federal traveler for their out of pockets expenses. It is certainly the understanding that reimbursing the traveler has been greatly improved since the implementation of these systems.
Going forward we acknowledge that user functionality is not where they want to be but due to excessive regulation this challenge.
Perhaps one of the most overlooked options for a federal agency is the use of an accommodated TMC versus the imbedded. Though they may both do the same job accommodated travel agencies have to compete to win your business and they must earn their value through their customer service.
If I were an agency my criteria would be how large is my business within this TMC’s total revenue? Do they have the facilities and personnel to handle by travelers? Do they operate or subcontract the 24 hour emergency desk or is it operated by their own staffs who know the nuances of my agency and their travelers.
Value of the travel agency can often be overlooked because we relate to many of the consumer driven systems that we use for our personal travel but have no regulations to require us of specific items for personal travel as we do for government travel. Given all the services a travel agency must do and services they can provide one should look very carefully at all choices for service rather than taking the quick solution of utilizing only the imbedded agency.
This is an opinion of myself and does not express any opinion on behalf of SGTP.
By Rick Singer