Spending on air, rail by Indian businesses sees highest rise where-in ranked the lowest in average entertainment spend at 2.44%.
Concur has released its third annual global report on corporate travel and entertainment (T&E) spend. The report analyzes more than $50 billion in corporate T&E spend, leveraging expense data generated by its more than 18,000 corporate clients.
The spend data was analyzed for nine nations worldwide, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and India.
India’s data threw up some interesting facts based on the analysis. The rupee declined 12.4% against the dollar from 2011 to 2012. Accounting for this change in exchange rates, we can see that India saw an 18% increase in the average airfare transaction, which is the highest recorded increase globally.
Rail costs also increased greatly – nearly 58%, which is the highest recorded increase across the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia. Surprisingly, the average gas transaction declined 4.2% suggesting that rising fuel costs were not the only factor behind the higher airfare and rail amounts
Bangalore once again emerged as the most visited city in India for business travel ranked at no. 12 in the 25 most visited cities followed by Mumbai ranked at 20 in terms of number of overnight hotel stays.
The average percentage spend on lodging (31%) was the highest in India as compared to other APAC countries like Japan (23%), Hong Kong (25%) and Australia (14%). India ranked the lowest in average entertainment spend at 2.44% and the highest being 8.14% in Japan
Christopher Juneau, Senior Director, Marketing, APAC, Concur Technologies said; “Through this report we aim to help our customers in understanding and organizing their employee spends accurately.”
The Concur Expense IQ Report also finds corporate travelers spent 93 percent more on ancillary fees in 2012 ($58 million) than they did in 2011 ($30 million) – challenging companies with nearly twice as much hidden or low-visibility spend.
“The fact that ancillary spending nearly doubled from 2011 to 2012 reflects two key facts: customers are using automated tools to more accurately track their ancillary spending, while airlines, hotels and other providers have gotten more savvy about componentizing their services to collect more cash in a down market,” explained Robert Mahowald, VP of Cloud Services at IDC.
Mobile devices were also found to be a growing aspect of companies’ expense management processes. The study found nearly 73% log-ins was via Apple iOS, while Android (14.6%) and Blackberry (12.7%) were also popular.
