I’m not one for sitting on the sofa watching re-runs of Escape to the Country, so when I recently had a day’s holiday at my Lowestoft retreat, I decided to build a wooden deck in the garden instead. 

The idea was that the decking would consolidate the ramshackle collection of outbuildings dotting the rear of Schloss Wylie into a pleasing, harmonious whole, as they might say on the programme I don’t watch. What could be easier?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. Nothing fitted smoothly, lined up or flowed correctly, making my garden look even messier than before. And then the heavens opened.

Retreating to the makeshift garden bar, I reflected over a can of restorative fluids that my decking disaster is a good analogy for the challenge travel managers face when trying to obtain clean, consolidated data. In theory, getting to a single source of data truth should be simple. In practice, it’s anything but, especially for multinational travel programmes.

If you employ more than one TMC, each will, for example, use different prefixes or codes for its client cost centres. And even if you have the same TMC everywhere, the data is much less aligned than you might think. That’s especially the case for countries where the TMC relies on partner agencies. 

Some global GDSs don’t work well in certain countries, so different markets have to use different ones, each reporting in different data formats.

Somehow, all this information has to be crunched together and normalised. The task is absolutely possible – with time, effort and know-how. In principle, a travel manager could ask their IT department to do it, but good luck getting their attention any time this century. Your company’s CTO has a pile of projects which take strategic precedence over cleaning up the mess that is travel data.

The good news is that independent solutions are emerging which pull all your data together from multiple sources, including multiple TMCs. They are also independent of the GDSs. AI is helping to cleanse and enrich the information and connect the flow of it to other services, like emissions reporting specialists. 

Technology really has come on leaps and bounds on issues like this. Travel managers may not realise they now have more flexibility and more choice, than in the past. To take one example, if you currently use only one TMC internationally, because you worry you won’t get properly consolidated data if you hire more, you can now put that fear to bed.

You’ll be relieved to know, I’m sure, that the rain stopped lashing down, the sun finally broke through and as I learnt with my decking, all problems can be fixed with the right tools and dedication.

Scott Wylie is Chief Technology Officer at TripStax