Online travel centre saves GE £1.1m

General Electric (GE) expects to save up to $2m (£1.1m) by deploying an online self-service travel centre for European staff this year.

During 2003, GE consolidated three separate reservation platforms into a single online e-centre, enabling employees to book their own flights, hotels, car rentals and other travel-related items, 24 hours a day.

A low-cost support centre in Warsaw, managed by GE's business travel management partner Carlson Wagonlit, backs up the e-centre, which is being rolled out across all of its European operations.

'GE puts constant pressure on all of its operations to take costs out of the business every year. We realised that there are no more cost reductions available in our corporate travel without an entire change in our business model,' said Keith Mullineux, GE's European travel manager.

Travel is a big overhead for GE, with 23,000 actively travelling staff in Europe completing 2,500 trips per week and an annual bill of £60m.

'Moving to a self-service model is a step change for us. It's not about three or four per cent cut in costs, but a significant reduction. Our 2004 travel transaction costs will be about 30 per cent less than in 2002, for the same quantity of flights,' said Mullineux.

GE partnered with travel technology specialist GetThere to build an online tool that would enable to staff to search and book any of their travel and accommodation requirements, with flight, hotel and car rental data supplied by Sabre's global distribution system.

'The travel landscape in Europe is changing so rapidly that it is hard to predict where it will be in 18 months from now. The online booking system provides us with a solid platform, so that we can manage our travel programme with global consistency,' said Mullineux.