Uni's encouraged to use procurement professionals

There appears to be considerable scope for universities to get better value for their travel and accommodation spend, and for the travel management companies to help them to do this.

Steve Summers, chief operating officer of Key Travel, has for some years been the sole travel provider to the London Universities Purchasing Consortium and is also on the framework of the giant Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium, two of the big university purchasing consortia.

“We are involved with about 70 universities and the biggest shift going on is that of procurement officers trying increasingly to manage the spend,” he says.

Financial stringencies mean the trend is towards “getting all the travel spend on contract so that procurement officers can then try to manage it down and once they do get all that managed they can do better deals through partnering with TMCs”, says Summers.

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