Top 5 Things to Think About in Airline Contracting

At Delta Business, we believe no one better connects the world of business, and a key part of that claim is the importance we place on crafting contracts that support your organization’s goals and help your business reach new heights.

While everything that should be considered when it comes to airline contracting certainly can’t be covered in a single article, we feel there are five particularly important things to do when it comes to airline contracting today:

1. Analyze your travel footprint
2. Evaluate evolving contract needs
3. Analyze the impact of remote work
4. Optimize booking tools
5. Think beyond the contract

Our Delta Business team is continually thinking about and asking our customers about these topics, encouraging an open dialogue to help create contracts that meet your unique needs. This approach is part of our steadfast dedication to business travel, backed by our relentless pursuit to understand, anticipate and innovate for you and your travelers.

1. Analyze your Travel Footprint

As you approach airline contracting for your organization, our first recommendation is to analyze and evaluate your travel footprint. This is an especially important step as organizations across the world have experienced immense change over these past few years – the geographies of your employee base may have shifted due to remote work or other flexible policies.

• Embrace change and update your contracting goals based on robust analysis
• Be realistic about your expectations given your organization’s new travel footprint
• Seek an airline partner, not just an airline provider, that supports your new travel footprint

Once you have a clearer picture of your travel footprint, spend some time thinking wholistically about what matters most to you and your business needs going into the contracting process. Additionally, talk with your airline provider about sustainability and premium policy before contract discussions begin to make the contracting process smoother for all parties.

2. Evaluate Evolving Contract Needs

In this ultra-competitive landscape, businesses need every advantage to stay ahead and a modern, evolved corporate travel program has the ability to be a key differentiator for your organization. New areas of focus – like blended travel, traveler wellness and sustainability goals – are becoming key points of interest across the board for corporations and the airlines that serve them. With these new and evolving areas in mind, it’s key to evaluate your contract needs so your travel program stays ahead.

When it comes to supporting traveler wellness, a travel policy offering premium seating that features a significant a fully lie-flat seating position can be a key differentiator for your traveler:

• A study published by the National Institute of Health found that participants enjoyed 29% more sleep, 30% more slow-wave sleep and 79% more REM sleep in lie-flat seats versus upright ones

It’s also important to think about how your airline partners can reduce stress to elevate your travelers’ wellness during their trips. According to respondents in a recent survey by BCD Travel, the top three causes of stress during a business trip were: 1) flight delays and cancellations, 2) tight connections and 3) sitting in economy class for long-haul flights. Ensure that your airline partner has programs, products and offerings in place that directly address and reduce those top stressors.

When it comes to helping your organization reach its sustainability goals, consider incorporating sustainability aviation fuel (SAF) agreements into your airline relationship. Or better yet, ask your airline partner if they’re able to create a bespoke sustainability offering that goes beyond a traditional SAF agreement to align with your organization’s goals.

3. Analyze the Impact of Remote Work

With the growth of remote and flexible work arrangements impacting traditional corporate travel patterns, taking the time to analyze how these shifts have impacted your travel program is a crucial step in ensuring your program’s success. Here are some questions to think about:

• How has your company's in-person and remote work changed over the past six months and what will it look like in the next six to 12 months?
• When booking business travel, have travel policies changed over the past few years, allowing your employees to extend their trip to include a leisure stay (e.g., blended travel)?
• If your employees received the green light to move away from their original office location during the pandemic, who is responsible for covering the travel costs if they need to come back to HQ for a conference, meeting or any return-to-office requirements?
• Have the business markets your travelers need to visit changed?

A recent corporate survey conducted by Delta Business indicated 96% of companies expect their travel will increase or stay the same in the second quarter of 2023, so it’s important to gather travel forecasts and changing travel patterns to benefit your contracting discussions.

4. Optimize Booking Tools

As the market evolves, now is the time to consider meaningful enhancements to your online booking tools (OBTs) to create an optimized booking experience your travelers will enjoy and supports travel program policy and compliance.

What tools do you have available in your OBT toolbox and are you using those tools? Three ways you can enhance your OBT to support your travel policy are to make sure the following are incorporated:

• Airline preference
• Lowest logical fare (such as spending thresholds, layover limits and time parameters)
• Sort order (shop by fare or schedule)

Implementing airline preferencing in your OBT can take the guesswork out of air bookings for your travelers by highlighting and allowing them to quickly choose the most compliant air travel provider – a win-win for both your travelers and your program. At the end of the day, your travelers and your organization both want a seamless experience from booking to baggage claim, so be sure to ask your airline partner about available OBT consulting services to optimize the booking experience.

5. Think Beyond the Contract

Your airline partnerships are more than just a contract, so it’s vital to consider the total value they can bring to your program. Think about things like the airline’s operational performance, onboard Wi-Fi capabilities, the airline’s loyalty program and even the airport experience including lounge offerings, terminal investments and more.

You can also track passenger experience specifics such as on-time arrivals and upgrades, as well as your company’s customer support profile for travel exceptions and overall service level performance.

With Delta Business, we provide you with Sky Partner Reports that analyze your Beyond Contract Value. This report provides an in-depth analysis of the value of your total partnership, savings and benefits so you’ll know exactly how much value you’re receiving from our partnership, both from your contract and beyond.

For more information, or to ask about any of the initiatives mentioned in this paper, please contact your Delta Sales representative or view the video series on our website where we dive into each of these five areas in more detail with our Delta Business subject matter experts.