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Become the Travel CEO — Gaining Visibility and Control Over Meeting Spend with Strategic Technology

Corporate travel has evolved — and so has the role of those who manage it. No longer focused solely on cost containment or supplier contracts, today’s most effective travel leaders are thinking like CEOs of a complex ecosystem: orchestrating spend, experience, sustainability, and compliance across every travel-related category.

But one category continues to operate in the shadows: meetings.

Despite accounting for up to 30% of total corporate lodging and travel spend, meetings often fall outside the scope of managed programs. Business units book independently. Budgets are siloed. Suppliers are disconnected. And when CFOs ask for a consolidated view of travel spend — meetings are missing from the picture.

It’s time to change that. With platforms like HRS Connect and Copilot, companies are finally able to bring meetings into full view — and into full control. The result isn’t just better reporting. It’s strategic transformation.

The Meetings Blind Spot: What Most Travel Leaders Can’t See

If your meetings spend isn’t flowing through centralized platforms, you’re likely missing:

• A clear picture of how much your organization spends on small and mid-sized meetings
• Visibility into which hotels and venues are used repeatedly — often outside negotiated contracts
• Emissions data required for Scope 3 sustainability reporting
• Duty of care coverage for attendees who are not considered “travelers”
• Opportunities to consolidate lodging and meeting spend with strategic suppliers

This lack of visibility doesn’t just affect reporting. It undermines the ability to make informed decisions and leaves money — and strategic influence — on the table.

Meetings Management as a Strategic Lever

Elevating travel leadership requires seeing beyond transactional management. Meetings, when brought into the travel ecosystem, become a lever for broader influence:

Savings:

By consolidating meetings and transient volume, procurement can negotiate chain-wide contracts that reflect real total spend.

Sustainability:

With HRS Green Stay integration, companies can calculate CO₂ impact not just from flights and lodging — but from venue usage.

Compliance:

Through automated approval flows and pre-approved suppliers, policy alignment becomes seamless — even when bookings are made by executive assistants or project teams.

Experience:

With a single interface, employees get access to the right venues, at the right price, with support when they need it.

Data-Driven Leadership with Copilot

Strategic technology isn’t about more dashboards. It’s about fewer surprises.

HRS Copilot enables travel leaders to:

• Track meetings spend by business unit, region, or event type
• Identify suppliers with high volumes but no formal contract
• Forecast budget impact based on seasonality, growth, or policy changes
• Flag non-compliant bookings — and suggest smarter alternatives
• Simulate the cost and emissions savings of shifting meeting types or formats

This is how modern leaders run their travel programs — not as administrators, but as executives empowered by data.

Empowering the Ecosystem, Not Just the Expert

One of the reasons meetings remain unmanaged is because they’re decentralized by design. Team leads, admins, or marketers often book them. That won’t change. What must change is the environment in which they book.

With HRS Connect, you can:

• Make it easy for anyone to request and book compliant meeting spaces
• Restrict bookings to approved venues and rates
• Feed meeting spend directly into travel and procurement reporting
• Collect sustainability and cost data without asking non-travelers to change their workflow

This shifts the responsibility from manual policing to smart design — where the right choice is the default choice.

The Rise of the Travel CEO

As travel programs touch more areas of the business — Finance, HR, ESG, Legal, DEI — the scope of the Travel Manager expands.

You’re no longer managing a category. You’re managing:

• A cross-functional budget
• A regulatory compliance perimeter
• A workforce satisfaction indicator
• A source of competitive advantage

And meetings are a major part of that equation.

By integrating meetings management into your ecosystem, you take ownership of one of the final frontiers of unmanaged spend — and gain influence over the full end-to-end traveler journey, from internal workshop to global summit.

HRS Perspective: Giving Leaders the Tools to Lead Strategically

At HRS, we believe Travel Managers are the new strategic orchestrators of enterprise mobility. But to lead effectively, you need real visibility, smart automation, and decision-grade data.

With HRS Connect and Copilot, we help you:

• Bring meetings spend into view
• Align venues with policy, safety, and sustainability goals
• Consolidate supplier strategies across categories
• Elevate your program’s contribution to company-wide outcomes

Leadership starts with clarity. We’re here to help you get it — and act on it.

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