Three-quarters of travel buyers survey their travelers about program satisfaction, but new research from GBTA and ARC reveals opportunities for corporations to track even more meaningful, traveler-centric metrics.

Most travel buyers agree companies can improve employee retention or reduce turnover by creating more traveler-centric policies and providing upgrades to the travel experience. However, while most buyers indicated interest in improving traveler-centric trip metrics, few are leveraging available data to measure trip quality, trip success and traveler retention.

“Our research highlighted some gaps in what is important to road warriors, and what their companies measure and use to lessen their trip friction,” said Chuck Thackston, ARC’s managing director of data science and research. “We found that travel managers are surveying and tracking their road warriors, but only 14% have exclusive travel policies for this critical group. This, in turn, may affect employee satisfaction, from stress reduction to retention.”

The research shows that, while 81% of travel buyers survey travelers regularly, only 44% survey about trip quality (things like sleep quality or travel mishaps), and just 34% survey about trip success (whether the trip achieved business goals). Of those that survey their travelers, only 32% share the results with internal stakeholders.

Traveler survey data often complements available HR data — and while about half of programs are interested in tracking metrics on traveler retention and “value,” very few are. Although 71% of travel programs receive data from their human resources department, less than 6% use it to measure traveler retention and turnover. Less than 1% of surveyed programs use this data to measure the “value” of traveler performance (i.e., based on salary or performance reviews).

Travel buyers have significant opportunities to enhance their business travelers’ experiences, increasing retention and productivity. Download the high-level report of research findings to learn more.