I have spent more than two decades in premium ground transportation, and one pattern has never changed. Corporate travel programmes are built to know where a traveller is supposed to be: the airport, the meeting room, the hotel, the dinner. They are rarely built to know how that traveller actually gets there.
New data from GBTA and Grab for Business puts a number on a behaviour many of us have watched for years. More than eight in 10 business travellers across South-east Asia book ground transport outside company policy or approved suppliers. At the same time, 42 per cent of companies still do not manage ground transport spend at all.
The last unmanaged category
In a corporate programme, air, rail and hotel spend are tightly managed, with approved suppliers, negotiated rates and volume commitments behind them. Ground transport has historically occupied a different place within corporate travel. It represents a relatively small proportion of spend, supplier choice has often been discretionary, and it has frequently been managed through expense policy rather than the travel programme itself.
That made more sense when it was a taxi queue and a paper receipt at the end of the night. It makes far less sense today, when the trips themselves have changed. They are longer, more multi-disciplinary, often linking several destinations in a single trip. Across these more complex journeys, ground transport is the connecting thread between airports, offices, venues and hotels, making it an integral component of the traveller’s business trip experience.
Where corporate travel lost control
The fast rise and availability of ride-hailing options filled these gaps rather quickly, and it is worth being honest about why. It was simple, it was available, and travellers could use the same app for work and for their personal lives. For the individual, it feels like the practical choice. For the organisation, it creates a blind spot at exactly the point where a traveller may need support most.
Managed ground transport combines the convenience travellers expect with the visibility, safety and oversight organisations need. Travellers increasingly expect all of those things as standard.
In the GBTA and Grab research, safety was the single most important factor travellers weighed when choosing how to get around, with three in four rating it extremely important. That matches what we hear from clients everywhere. People want confidence in the driver, the vehicle and the support behind them if plans change.
What good looks like under pressure
The industry already knows what good looks like, because it delivers it at the hardest end of the market. We have supported some of the most demanding and security-sensitive events in the world, from Champions League finals to the Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, which this year take place in Bangkok. The common thread is that plans change by the hour, discretion is essential, and successful delivery depends on teams and drivers with the local knowledge and operational experience to adapt at a moment’s notice.
That standard should not be reserved for heads of state and senior delegations. A project team landing in an unfamiliar city late at night needs the same reassurance. So does the executive moving between back-to-back meetings, and the traveller whose flight has just been cancelled. What we do for the highest-stakes events is simply what good ground transport looks like, and it is fast becoming the baseline every traveller expects.
A model for the whole trip
There is a real opportunity for corporates to rethink how they manage ground transport. By turning it from a relatively small line item to a strategic component of a global travel programme, organisations can take greater control of spend, improve traveller visibility and strengthen their approach to duty of care.
The technology and expertise already exist to make this possible. Ground transport can be managed with the same visibility and oversight as air, rail and hotels, giving travel managers better control while delivering a more convenient and consistent experience for passengers.
Business trips are remembered not just by the meetings that take place, but by the journeys between them. When organisations recognise ground transport as the integral part of the travel experience that it is, they have an opportunity to regain control and deliver the standard of care and accessibility today’s travellers expect.
Craig Chambers is the group CEO of TBR Global Chauffeuring, leading its global strategy and growth. Over a two-decade tenure at TBR, he has held key leadership roles – including sales director for EMEA and worldwide sales, and managing director for EMEA – consistently driving regional operations and global expansion.
