Skip to content
Come Fly with Me: Improving Air Travel Experience for Federal Employees

Case Study

Come Fly with Me: Improving Air Travel Experience for Federal Employees

Complicated, frustrating, and stringent travel policies were leaving employees of an internationally-focused federal agency dissatisfied. Censeo helped the agency address pain points with no increase to cost.

Situation

Employees at an internationally-focused federal agency had expressed a growing discontent with work-related air travel, citing complications, inflexibility, and unforgiving processes and regulations. Additionally, travel policies and restrictions were regulated at both a government- and agency-wide level, causing inconsistencies. According to employees, these unnecessarily stringent and inconsistent travel policies were negatively affecting the travel experience.

At the same time, travel managers at the agency cited concerns about the cost of airfare, particularly cost increases with any changes to the current travel policies. To address these issues, the agency engaged Censeo to evaluate its travel program and identify opportunities to reduce costs and enhance the travel experience for employees.

Approach

Censeo began by analyzing travel patterns across the organization, and evaluating the experiences of travelers to determine the issues resulting in the most hardship for travelers. Censeo identified the underlying drivers for the most significant issues, and evaluated various options to directly target and improve each pain point.

To evaluate various policy and practice options, Censeo benchmarked the client’s policies against the policies and practices of similar federal organizations. Censeo then estimated the cost impact of potential policy changes.

To ensure that the policy changes would not increase the agency’s costs, Censeo also analyzed and identified savings opportunities related to the booking channel used, fare type purchased, and rate paid by travelers.

Results

Censeo provided the agency with a clear, data-driven picture of the key issues and pain points facing the traveler community. To improve the traveler experience, Censeo designed targeted policies and practices which would increase traveler satisfaction. Censeo also devised a strategy to select the most cost-advantageous fare type and booking method, based on the organization’s unique travel patterns, which offset the costs of the new policies. As a result, traveler’s pain points were resolved with no net new costs to the Department.

Featured Experts

Curt Cote
Managing Partner
Vinai Trichur
Managing Partner