Motorola Europe
, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has signed a multi-market deal to use the GetThere
online self-booking system for business travel bookings.  Some 9,000 Motorola staff across Europe will use the product to book their business travel each year.  Motorola is expected to realise substantial travel savings as a result, from greater compliance with corporate travel policy and the use of less expensive travel options.

Motorola will introduce the product to travellers based in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy.  The initiative is part of the company’s global focus on reducing costs.  Travel-based cost-cutting initiatives have included standardising and centralising its pan-European travel booking and fulfillment processes.  Terri Collins, Motorola’s corporate travel manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the GetThere system would support this strategy by enhancing traveller convenience and helping to reduce administrative processes. 

“The face of travel management in Europe is changing fast,” she said. “Technology can now help companies combat escalating travel costs.  Companies with large travel budgets have a responsibility to ensure that they are doing whatever they can to eliminate unnecessary costs in the travel purchasing chain.”

Implementation in the UK is complete and a phased roll out across Motorola UK sites is in progress.  Discussions are also underway on deploying the system in other countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Collins said Motorola would continue to work closely with travel management company, BTI.

“Our use of GetThere will free up BTI consultants to concentrate on elements of travel consulting that do add very real value,” she said.

Motorola asked several suppliers of corporate online self-booking systems to submit details in a competitive pitch, and identified GetThere as being best able to meet Motorola’s very specific European needs.

“Importantly, the GetThere product could combine local market requirements with centralised fulfillment, thereby supporting our more generic campaign to reduce the number of fulfillment operations we use,” Collins said.

More than 450 European companies are now using a GetThere online corporate travel reservation system.  GetThere’s director of sales and marketing for Europe, Tod Lockard, said companies in the region were starting to realise the scale of the savings that business travel online self-booking systems can generate.

“Our European booking figures for quarter two this year shot up by 175 percent against the same period in 2002, while previous quarters showed similar growth,” Lockard said.  “The market for online corporate travel reservation systems is not yet as large in Europe as in North America, but the figures show we are growing significantly here, and that’s good by any standard.” 
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