Travel Matters June 2017

10 | TRAVEL TRENDS www.travelctm.co.uk Long before Chambers Travel Management morphed into CTM, the TMC was synonymous with clients in the legal profession as it started out as a specialist company offering services targeted squarely at law firms. Its former name says it all. Naturally, Chambers acquired the knowledge needed to service this particular industry and became familiar with the culture of such companies. Today, it is still the ‘go-to’ travel management company when partners decide they need expert help for all their business travel. Being part of CTM has amplified what services and products are on offer for legal firms and CTMs client portfolio includes what are referred to as the ‘Magic Circle’ of law firms. There are many reasons why account managers need industry-specific training to be able to satisfy the needs of a law firm account. The company structure of a law firm is different to other industry verticals, for example, as it is made up of partners who are the owners of the company. “Those senior partners are always out making money for the company so their time is of the essence,” explains CTMs Strategic Business Manager Kevin Petre. “There is lots of last-minute travel and we need the partners to make money so we can’t have them sitting in an airport. The partners need to be on-site walking their clients through the new contracts.” Last-minute travel can lead to premium travel but law firms are extremely cost conscious so CTM works hard to ensure costs are kept to a minimum. Economy and premium economy flights are the norm, hotels’ complimentary limo transfer made use of - something that is standard in the Middle East for example - and hotel deals struck to include breakfast and/ or executive floor rooms so travellers can benefit from complimentary all-day snacks, refreshments and meeting space. CTMs most experienced account managers are allocated to manage law accounts, drawing on their undoubted contacts to pull favours with suppliers, are fully conversant with airport MCTs (minimum connection times) and ultimately can ensure a seamless end-to- end journey for each and every traveller. “They need to be strong consultants as they need to constantly work outside the box to find quick solutions,” explains Petre. “Typically, an executive PA may deal with four or five partners at the law firm so we need to take any crisis or change or travel alert off their hands and manage it ourselves.” He adds: “We ‘hand-hold’ the clients. That might mean holding the gate so they make the flight, or making sure that they can still eat dinner when arriving late at a hotel. It’s very much a white glove service that we give. We think ahead and walk that client through every aspect of the journey, be it booking a car to get to the airport or pre-checking them in for a flight.” If a meeting finishes early CTM will change the inbound flight and get them back on an earlier flight. They will exploit advance-booking deals when they can. They will combine multiple travel trips and optimise the airline tickets if a partner is flying to several European cities over consecutive days. Another law-firm market characteristic is how the travel cost is dealt with internally. Law firms split travel costs into non-billable, ie those travel costs, which are not going to be charged to the client; and billables, which will be re-charged to the clients. “What we need to do is share costs quickly and transparently,” says Petre. “The booking process is key. We need to capture all the booking information, allocate the cost to the project owner and gain approval so the ticket can be issued, the charges made and issue an invoice to the client’s finance team for them to pass on, if need be, all within 24 hours.” Petre concludes: “It’s all about maximising that partner’s travel and that’s what we excel at.” LEGAL EAGLES Legal firms need special care and attention when it comes to managing their business travel needs, explains Gillian Upton www.travelctm.co.uk TRAVEL TRENDS | 11