Customer Success Story: How Feld Entertainment Saves on Travel and Increases Online Booking Adoption

The global leader in live touring family entertainment experiences, Feld Entertainment is in the business of bringing people together, uplifting the human spirit, and putting on an awesome show.

Throughout the past 50 years, the Feld family has captivated millions of audience members in more than 75 countries across six continents with more than 3,600 shows each year. That means a lot of travel. Whether performing or behind the scenes, it is critical that everyone working to make each show great has a positive travel experience – from a nice place to stay to getting around in a new city. And it’s just as critical for Feld to provide that experience for employees without breaking the bank.

To manage trip booking, Feld uses the Concur Travel solution. Employees can book travel and manage changes on the go from the SAP Concur mobile app – saving time and making travel simpler and less stressful. Integration with a wide array of travel service partners means that travelers can choose the brands they love. Plus, Feld can negotiate discounted rates with preferred airlines, hotels, and other travel vendors.

According to Christine Zajda, director of procurement, sourcing, and travel for Feld Entertainment, access to SAP Concur App Center partners like Rocketrip, Uber and Airbnb also helps her deliver choice and convenience for travelers while gaining savings and insight for the company.

“Adding Uber has helped us cut ground transportation costs by half,” she explains. “Our touring staff can be on the road for up to a year. With Airbnb, they can get a large home where they can relax and barbeque out back after working long hours. It has really helped improve their quality of life. And, it saved us more than $100,000 last year alone.”

Within Feld’s workforce, roughly 3,000 associates travel for business. While enforcement of company travel policy is built into Concur Travel, Zajda wanted more motivation for employees to consider the bottom line when booking travel. The question was: How do you motivate employees to save on travel in a way that goes beyond policy compliance?

That’s where Rocketrip takes center stage.

“For many companies, travel is the one spending area where employees act like consumers,” explains Dan Ruch, Rocketrip founder and CEO. “We are leaving friends and family to go out on the road. So, we expect a certain level of comfort, convenience, and flexibility. But there is also a lot of frivolous spending. Rocketrip helps incentivize employees to cut that out by returning a percentage of any savings to their pockets.”

With Rocketrip integrated into Concur Travel, employees can compare the costs of different booking options, so they can make economical travel choices that are good for their pocketbook and for the company.

Feld employees are clearly happy with the new integrated solution, as evidenced by an 88% adoption rate of booking in Concur Travel – up from 35% before the addition of the Rocketrip incentive program. “Rocketrip is a behavior modification tool,” explains Zajda, “and that’s what we’re doing.”

By helping employees make better spending choices, Feld has seen a 15% reduction in the number of nights spent in hotels with a US$191 average savings per night from employees choosing to stay with family or friends. By choosing a lower-star-class hotel, employees have saved Feld 23% on total nights booked with an average savings of $73 per night. Flying low-cost carriers has resulted in a 10% savings on total flights booked with $171 saved on average per flight. And the savings keeps employees happy as well – by choosing to spend less on travel, they can earn points toward gift cards, cash cards or even donate them to charity.

Feld’s bottom-line results are better than expected. “We initially anticipated a 17% savings in the first year,” says Zajda, “and we actually realized an incredible 36%.”

Plus, the Rocketrip Insights analytics dashboard provides detailed breakdowns of every trip so Feld’s travel and procurement executives can see the underlying sources of spending and target specific expense categories for additional savings.

Watch the video to hear the full story on how Feld Entertainment is using Rocketrip and Concur Travel to make traveling better for employees and more cost-effective for the company. Then head over to SAP Concur App Center to download the app for yourself.

To learn more about how SAP Concur solutions can simplify travel and expense management for your business, visit concur.com.