The Travel Manager. An even more crucial expert of business.

Just a few years ago, taking care of employees' off-site trips was a secretarial job. Today, with the rise of multinationals and the spread of globalization, business travel requires targeted and strategic control and management. For global companies, and others too. 

Before looking at the skills of the Travel Manager, we need to say a few words about this figure who is gaining enormous influence over all stages of travel. This is a crucial activity for companies, which are increasingly responding to the needs of multi-channeling and new paradigms of "professional ubiquity" for employees. According to the AITMM - the Italian Association of Travel Mobility Managers - Travel Managers have become a real point of reference in areas ranging from administration to safety at work. Increasingly oriented towards socially and environmentally sustainable travel, they not only ensure value from this investment but also generate well-being that contributes to the success of companies, whose human capital is increasingly mobile and multi-ethnic.  

The Travel Manager is a professional figure who is fully involved in the ongoing dynamics of a business. As we can read on the PartnerPlusBenefit portal of the Lufthansa Group, they are not only in charge of auditing employees' needs but also maintain active and proactive control over travel policy, proposing funding and budget reallocations for corporate travel. The corporate Travel Manager, is therefore responsible for optimizing corporate regulations regarding travel and communicating them to human resources. In fact, they have the task of actively supervising every aspect of "business mobility": from permissible categories of transport to proper use of credit cards. 

As we have seen, the Travel Manager does not focus only on cost management, budgets and ROI determination, but is primarily interested in process optimization through negotiation and networking practices. So both business administration and geopolitical skills are needed to fully understand the organizations, the regions and the markets in which a company operates. Themes that are increasingly sensitive and of common interest, on account of global interconnection and fluidity of movement. Hence the considerable eagerness to see the results of the survey undertaken by the AITMM in cooperation with Doxa and Travel for Business, which has the goal of understanding how this role has evolved in Italy, what are the important challenges right now, and above all what are the expectations for the future.