Industries
Why hospitality employees leave and how to understand why
Hotel, restaurant and banquet staff leave for reasons that vary by department and season. How to ask what sits behind the first answer and act on it.
8 min readRead article
Travel Agencies & Tour Operators · Corporate travel providers
HR for Corporate travel providers: Client Desks, Round-the-Clock Cover and Account Managers
A corporate travel provider books flights, hotels and cars for other companies' employees. Each client has its own policy and its own urgent calls, and the team has to answer them at any hour.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA corporate travel provider handles business trips for client companies, from a manager's last minute flight to a sales team's quarterly offsite. Each client has its own travel policy, approved hotels, approval chain and reporting need. Dedicated desks of travel executives serve one or two clients, an account manager looks after the relationship, and an after-hours team takes urgent calls for changes and cancellations. Revenue comes from service fees and supplier commissions, so errors and slow replies cost the account itself. Work is steady through the year with peaks around month ends and travel seasons. The wider hospitality hub covers what hotels and travel share.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in corporate travel providers, you may see
- Each client is a different rulebook
- Urgent calls arrive at all hours
- Account managers are measured late
- Speed and accuracy pull against each other
- The client desk is a dead end
- Client staff change and the policy changes
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in corporate travel providers
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Corporate travel executives on client desks
- Ticketing and reissue specialists
- Account managers for client companies
- After-hours and emergency desk staff
- Hotel and ground transport booking staff
- MICE and event travel coordinators
- Billing and reconciliation executives
- Team leaders and desk supervisors
Where HR strains in corporate travel providers
Each client is a different rulebook
An executive handling three clients must remember three policies, three approval chains and three styles, and slips are then charged to the provider.
Urgent calls arrive at all hours
A traveller stranded after a cancelled flight does not wait until morning, so after-hours cover has to be real and rested.
Account managers are measured late
Churn shows up when a client does not renew, long after the signs of a poor desk were visible.
Speed and accuracy pull against each other
Executives are pushed to turn around requests quickly, yet one wrong date on a ticket costs more than a slow reply.
The client desk is a dead end
Good executives get stuck on one account for years with no next step, and then leave for a rival.
Client staff change and the policy changes
When a client's travel manager changes, the provider's team has to learn new rules without being told.
HR topics for corporate travel providers
Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Administration; Performance Management; Career and Succession Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for hospitality, not in general.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a corporate travel providers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Run a fixed shift plan for after-hours cover
A rota with rest days after night duty, a named backup and a simple call log.
What this coversHide
Run a fixed shift plan for after-hours cover
A rota with rest days after night duty, a named backup and a simple call log.
What this coversHideA rota with rest days after night duty, a named backup and a simple call log. Shift and leave planning uses it.
Give every client a one-page policy brief
Approval chain, preferred suppliers, class of travel and contacts, held with the desk and checked each quarter.
What this coversHide
Give every client a one-page policy brief
Approval chain, preferred suppliers, class of travel and contacts, held with the desk and checked each quarter.
What this coversHideApproval chain, preferred suppliers, class of travel and contacts, held with the desk and checked each quarter.
Measure desks on accuracy and speed together
A small set of measures per desk, such as errors found after booking, response time and client feedback.
What this coversHide
Measure desks on accuracy and speed together
A small set of measures per desk, such as errors found after booking, response time and client feedback.
What this coversHideA small set of measures per desk, such as errors found after booking, response time and client feedback. See performance process.
Create a route from executive to account manager
Skills for each rung, with a stretch period running part of an account under supervision.
What this coversHide
Create a route from executive to account manager
Skills for each rung, with a stretch period running part of an account under supervision.
What this coversHideSkills for each rung, with a stretch period running part of an account under supervision. Manager development supports the step.
Hold a quarterly client review with the desk
Account manager and desk lead meet to talk about what the client said, what slipped and what is changing.
What this coversHide
Hold a quarterly client review with the desk
Account manager and desk lead meet to talk about what the client said, what slipped and what is changing.
What this coversHideAccount manager and desk lead meet to talk about what the client said, what slipped and what is changing.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- Count after-hours calls last month and who answered them.
- Ask a desk executive to list the clients they handle and their rules without looking.
- Check how many errors were found after ticketing last quarter.
- List who has been on the same client desk for more than three years.
- Ask an account manager how soon they would know that a client is unhappy.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the registration, travel industry and employment rules that apply to the services you provide.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- Attendance, shift and leave process
Rotas for after-hours cover and leave around month-end peaks.
- Employee onboarding process
A client-by-client induction so new executives know the rules before booking.
- HR reporting and analytics
Desk measures read together, so speed is never read without accuracy.
- Manager development programme
A step from the desk into account management.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in hospitality, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Process
One employee, three versions of the record: fixing employee information management
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
Industries
Measuring performance in chemical and specialty chemical makers: what to track and what to ignore
Measures that show how reactor, console, lab and gantry staff are really doing, the ones that mislead or bury near misses, and a monthly sheet an in-charge can run in twenty minutes.
7 min readRead article
HR Management
"What if this person resigned tomorrow?" A succession exercise for small companies
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Use a rota with a named backup, a rest day after night duty and a call log that goes to the desk in the morning. Rotate fairly and ask the team for improvements.
Balance client loads, cap overtime in peaks, rotate difficult accounts and give a path upward. Burn-out shows early as errors and short replies.
The client's policy, the booking tools you use, the common errors and how to escalate. A new executive should shadow a senior on live requests for a few days.
Use client retention, feedback, growth in volume and the quality of desk handovers. Add a view of how they look after their team.
Yes. Pair each client with a main and a backup executive, so that an absence or an exit does not stop service. The backup should handle a few live requests each month to keep the client rules fresh.
We would ask how after-hours calls are covered, count errors found after ticketing and see how long executives stay on one account. A rota and client brief is a useful first job, with scope written down for your approval.
More on HR for hospitality
All 6 business types in travel agencies & tour operators · Find another business type