LONDON, Feb. 9, 2010 (PR Newswire Europe) -- v>

- Research Examines Policy and Cost Control to Uncover Savings Opportunities; Company Also Announces Win of Bupa Corporate Travel Business

LONDON BUSINESS TRAVEL SHOW -- Egencia(R), an Expedia, Inc. company, today previewed results from a global study "Hotel Cost Control: Savings and Opportunities," finding that companies risk tremendous annual budget losses through unmanaged travel activity. Pairing insight from corporate travellers, travel executives and real-world travel programs, the study also examines common areas of loss, ways to prevent leakage and emerging opportunities for cost savings in an effort to establish industry best practices.

"The opportunity to share our knowledge along with insight from our clients around the world is an important part of Egencia's strategy," said Christophe Pingard, Senior Vice President, Egencia Europe. "As a global leader in travel management, we felt a dedicated study would let us examine this issue more acutely to identify best practices and ultimately help companies stop preventable losses."

Egencia UK also announced today that they have been named the corporate travel partner for Bupa, the leading international healthcare company. Egencia will deliver to Bupa a combination of superior service and technology to drive increased compliance and uncover savings opportunities.

Jason Cloke, Purchasing Manager for Bupa said, "After a thorough tendering process, we selected Egencia as our corporate travel provider because its proposed solutions best met our requirements. Access to Egencia's intuitive online booking tool and high quality customer service will help us deliver savings, while making the process speedier and more efficient for staff to book their travel."

Hotel Policy and Cost Control Research

A global survey of 433 travel executives revealed missed opportunities for corporations managing hotel spend, including that 30 percent said their companies did not have a hotel policy in place. Supporting data confirms other gaps including:

- 65% do not have city-specific hotel per diems - 33% use expense reporting to monitor compliance - 34% require pre-trip approval to monitor compliance - To encourage compliance: 32% proactively inform all travelers of the policy; 29% verbally reprimand travelers who book out of policy, 12% send email notification to those who book out of policy; and 12 percent do not enforce compliance at all.

These statistics are significant because defining hotel per diems by city or actively enforcing policy can help make a travel program more fiscally sound.