Stage and Screen phone number 1300 73 73 83

ARE YOU TRAVELLING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

Managing entertainment and sports travel can feel like navigating your way through a maze. There's often numerous travellers to move, freight logistics to coordinate, individual preferences to satisfy, and far flung destinations to reach on time. A travel management company (TMC) can steer you towards more productive planning, lower costs, and a smoother trip all round.

Why 'flying by the seat of your pants' will cost you

If you're booking most of your travel on the run or at the last minute, it's not a question of whether you're paying too much… it's a question of how much you're being hit unnecessarily. Making bookings without a widescreen view of your travel patterns and without being able to source the best rates, will most certainly sting you with inflated costs. Here's how.

Ways of booking travel	The pitfalls
Using multiple agents for different travel bookings	No consolidation of spend to cut the best deals with suppliers, because your booking volumes aren't as high. No central source for all your travellers' profiles, which slows the booking process and makes it hard to find your staff in an emergency. No travel policy to keep all your bookings in line and cut your costs.
Allowing your travellers to make their own bookings	Your travel expenses can sky-rocket. There's too many different suppliers, making it impossible to negotiate lower prices with any of them. Multiple booking methods are being used, which wastes both time and money. It's harder to track your travellers in an emergency.
Booking direct through supplier websites	You have a very limited choice of product. Forget preferred supplier agreements! Rates/fares can be up to 30% higher than Stage and Screen's negotiated entertainment rates. Booking changes can incur hefty costs. You lose valuable time trawling the net searching for flights and fares etc. You get no expert travel and destination knowledge and advice

How Stage and Screen puts savings in motion

To buy travel and save, you need the help of a travel management company (TMC) with the supplier relationships and the smarts to make a difference. Stage and Screen is a proven performer in entertainment and sports travel. We'll coach you in all facets of your travel to ensure it becomes a slick production. We're here to:

shape a more competitive travel culture for you
negotiate the best rates in entertainment and sports travel
give you technology to snare the best fares and track expenses
boost your productivity by slashing the amount of time you spend on bookings
make you savvier about travel as a whole.

The following sections drill down on each of these points.

1. Shaping a more competitive travel culture

If you're in charge of travel for a large group, production, sporting team or similar, managing the wants and needs of different travellers is a juggling act. They want a choice and you want cost control. So where do you go from here?

Talk with your travellers and find out what's most important to them. You can then choose the airlines, hotels and car companies that give them the best mix of comfort, convenience and flexibility. Stage and Screen can negotiate with these 'preferred' suppliers based on higher volumes of usage. So you can then offer your travellers a choice that will keep them happy, and your budget in the black!

If it's cheaper rates and fares that really strike a chord for you, you need a central travel policy that keeps your use of suppliers in check. The tighter your policy, the more we can negotiate. A policy will also give you the advantage by opening your eyes to cost-saving tips like:

advance bookings
opting for different classes of travel eg. economy seats on domestic flights and premium economy instead of business class, where appropriate
being flexible on flight dates and times.

A policy is only as good as how much it is used, so your travellers really need to get behind it to make it work. Stage and Screen not only helps fashion a good policy for you, but makes sure your travellers 'see the light' when it comes to the benefits. Educating your team is the clincher in creating more cost-conscious travel behaviour.

2. Negotiating entertainment and sporting rates

Stage and Screen flexes its negotiating muscle to win entertainment and sporting rates that are available only to your industry. We also use multi-sourcing platforms that search the largest range of domestic and international airfares, including negotiated fares, corporate, wholesale, discounted retail and group fares.

If you partner with us, you can access the Best Fares of the Day (BFOD) every time you book. The savings are not just limited to airfares. Stage and Screen's hotel rates are often among the lowest, and we can search the world for properties at rates that have been negotiated for your benefit. If you already have a hotel program or specific accommodation booking processes, we can either tidy those up or leverage them for increased savings. For example, we can:

put your room night volumes under the spotlight to see if we can bolster your rate negotiations
look at where you usually stay, to decide whether there are more cost effective options that are just as handy for you
negotiate on the full cost of your accommodation by including whatever value-adds you tend to use (eg. breakfasts, internet services)
check your compliance with the hotel program by identifying lost opportunities for savings
make year-on-year rate comparisons, like city average reports
negotiate with the best knowledge of volume to achieve the lowest rates, provided all your hotel bookings are made through us.

In addition to air travel and accommodation, Stage and Screen can offer leading car hire rates with all major suppliers.

3. Going 'techno' to lower expenses and snare best fares

The phrase 'knowledge is power' is absolutely true when it comes to tracking your travel expenses. How can you know what you are spending if you don't have the tools to report on all your travel bookings and costs?

Stage and Screen offers Tramada technology to put you in the pilot's seat with your cost reduction. In addition to its online booking engine, Tramada gives you an automated travel policy manager along with intelligent travel reporting. So you can snap up the best fares of the day, track your spend, lift your policy compliance and lower costs overall.

Reporting also gives you performance benchmarks so you can actually measure your savings.

4. Boosting your productivity

Have you ever stopped to consider how much time you actually spend booking your travel, especially for international trips?

By the time you do your homework on destinations, trawl a range of websites for flights and hotels, and check on availability, it may scare you to discover how much productivity you've lost. Yet a TMC can take as little as five minutes to complete a point-to-point booking, with just an email or phone call from you or your traveller.

Stage and Screen can also save you time by taking care of preferred supplier contracts for you, using our global negotiating strength.

5. Making you savvier about travel

The travel industry is always in a state of change... whether it be new prices, regulations, supplier trends, technology or a natural disaster to keep you on your toes! All of these factors can impact your travel plans and what you pay. With a TMC by your side, you can stay up-to-speed with latest developments and any effects they will have on you. Our job is to keep you moving smoothly and cost effectively every time you travel.

We're also international airfare gurus, well versed in managing multi-point itineraries at the best prices. We'll arm you with strategies to generate more 'bang for your buck', and we'll share our knowledge of destinations worldwide based on our own travel experiences.

Working with Stage and Screen, you'll have all the services and tools you need – from bookings, to reporting, 24/7 emergency support, VIP travel, and cost control. You and your team can rest easy that you're saving money where possible, while enjoying hassle-free travel.