Irina Kostyukova: «Our main task is travel management centralization»

Business travel in Russia is in its youth nowadays. Now a group of real experts in business travel is shaping; they have extensive experience and are ready to share it. The Russian Association of Business Travel launches a series of interviews with Russian and foreign business travel experts. Our first interviewed expert is Irina Kostyukova, Head of Business Travel in Kaspersky Lab.

— Irina, how did you come to travel management?

— I worked as a translator after graduation for some time. I consider myself a born linguist, I love to translate, to write, and I feel the language. My first position in Kaspersky Lab 11 years ago required a good knowledge of English and included a range of duties: registration of contracts, archiving, administration of the company’s website, and business trip arrangement for the staff.

The position was called «office manager», but business trip arrangement occupied the most of my time. There were more and more requests for business trips. The company developed rapidly: when I came, there were not more than 150 employees, all knew each other personally. Now the number of employees of the Moscow office amounts to more than 1600 people, another 1000 work in branches and offices located in 30 countries. The group that I control consists of four travel coordinators. We process 2500 travel requests per year.

— Does your department process requests from numerous branches all around the world? Is travel management centralized?

— Until recently each of the offices organized its staff travel independently; we only dealt with the Russian office. Due to a smaller number of employees in the branches, business trips are usually processed by administrative staff there. Every office has local contracts with airlines and agencies. This is unprofitable, because we lose additional volume discounts, complicate communication, miss statistics. But the first steps have been made: for example, hotels in major destinations for 2013 are included into a single program.

Centralization is our main task for the coming year, in general. In particular, we have conducted a tender among global TMCs that are ready to work with all of our offices. The tender results in conclusion of a contract with one of the major TMC who will launch a pilot project in our two European offices. If this experience is successful, it will spread to other branches.

— Does the company have its own contacts with suppliers, or do all communications go to TMCs?

— These processes can take place in parallel. For example, an important part of our business trips is visiting branches, that are located not in the big cities, but in their suburbs, as a rule, where the choice of hotels is not so good. Such hotels often belong to small hotel chains, or even are non-chain — it means they may not be included into agencies` base. As for consolidators, You can find such hotels in their database, but the price is unlikely to be attractive, and hotels will never understand what client the reservation has been made for. It misleads statistics. We find a hotel that suits us in terms of its price/quality and work with it, we require certain conditions. But sometimes the hotel cooperates with the agency better than with us. Then the agency helps us in negotiations. But in any case we are talking about assistance in getting a direct corporate rate.

I often negotiate with airlines, trying to unite our local contacts. These are often talks with the participation of a TMC, where statistics of past periods plays a key role. Of course, agencies use data and figures in a more professional way that a client.

Therefore, one of the requirements for a global agency was the opportunity to use our own travel -programs and to have a wide range of statistics on the volume of services. The agencies we have cooperated with so far work with a number of suppliers on their own terms. Even if their prices are acceptable, they still cannot be compared with those that we can obtain directly.

— Why do you need agencies in this case?

— First of all, to do the technical work and calculations (even if we have a direct contract, we are not ready to communicate directly with airlines, hotels and other suppliers and to pay for their services separately — it is complicated and inefficient) and to consolidate and to provide statistics.

— What were your other requirements regarding TMCs?

— Our main requirement for a business travel agency is its globality: it has to be represented in all our destinations either directly or through its partners. It was equally important for us to get a good online booking service that allowed us to combine the benefits of our corporate programs and possibilities of the agency. Online programs have a lot of problems, but somehow they present the future.

— Irina, you are one of the «elders» of travel management in Russia; did the business travel industry form right before your very eyes?

— Of course, I learned through my work and I continue to learn. I like to open new horizons; moreover, it is necessary, because the industry is changing rapidly, new tools and technologies appear. Access to information and exchange of experiences are very important.

When I found information about the Association of Corporate Travel Executives on the Internet, I convinced management to allocate a budget for joining it. When I first visited one of ACTE sessions, I found out that the issues relevant to us were also important to representatives of the global business travel industry. Furthermore, I understand that the processes we have launched are in the trend of the whole industry. Frankly speaking, it strengthens your self-esteem.

The number of Russian ACTE participants is growing every year, there are now about 10 of us. I am glad that we now have the Russian Association of Business Travel and feel the need to share my knowledge and experience with its members.

— Do you like to travel?

— Sure, but I am like «wheelbarrow without a wheel» and seldom have business trips. I try to get out somewhere as a tourist several times a year, I love Europe a lot. There are cities that you want to visit again and again. First of all, these are London and Paris. I love Amsterdam, Venice. Now I am a fan of Corsica: it is quite an awesome place where I can improve my French: English is not spoken here. So if anyone needs to practice that language, I highly recommend it.

Ekaterina Sirina