Why CFOs love iXiGO.com

In these times of flat top lines and receding bottom lines, cost cutting is an imperative from which no CFO can shy away. Some key findings according to a recent survey conducted by CFO Research Services in collaboration with Amadeus and research carried out by Effective Travel Management:

• Around 50% of the CFOs / finance professionals interviewed for the respondents believe that booking directly on Airline / Hotel websites offers significant (medium to high) opportunity to save costs. (Source: Cost Control and Beyond)
• A major proportion of respondents feel that effective feedback tools save costs (25%) and improve operational efficiency (17%) (Source: Cost Control and Beyond)
• It is possible to enjoy cost savings of ~10% just through Advance Air Booking (5.7%) and booking Restricted Fares (4.8%)* (Source: Effective Travel Management)

* Note: As restricted fares are typically available in advance, there is a 1.5% overlap in savings from improved performance in these two areas.

iXiGO.com offers several tangible benefits to the CFO looking to keep costs in check:

• Book Direct – iXiGO.com searches directly on the airline sites. It also provides access to the world’s largest inventory of hotels, offering the greatest option to users while displaying fares from various booking sites (including direct hotel sites).
• Reduce Costs through “Visual Guilt” (Price Comparison) – It is a well researched fact that when people are presented with options and shown visually that they can get the same product for substantially less, they feel compelled to do the right thing (i.e. buy at the lowest price). iXiGO.com allows travelers to search and compare the same property across different vendors, thereby ensuring the lowest possible cost to the firm.

• Leverage Feedback of the Crowd – iXiGO.com searches multiple travel review sites, providing “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) professionals a single window access to the wisdom of the crowd.

• Plan Ahead (Advance Air Bookings) – iXiGO.com’s fare outlook graph allows the business traveler to save costs by planning ahead.
  

• Search Lowest Business (or Economy) Fares – iXiGO.com enables the harried business traveler strike the ideal balance between cost and comfort by providing the flexibility to search both Business as well as Economy class fares across all airlines.
  
• Search Fare Trend on Preferred Supplier – Definitely a boon for the “DIY” traveler who can now view the next 30 days’ Fare Outlook for all airlines on their frequently flown sector(s).

• Monitor Fare Trend on Most Frequented Sectors – iXiGO.com makes it easy to monitor fare trends by "pushing" them to the busy professional's Desktop or Web based RSS Reader.

• Rail as a Viable Alternative – Super fast search allows the cost conscious traveler to easily identify the routes where rail becomes a viable alternative to air.

Smart CFOs understand that all travel portals are NOT equal - booking through Online Travel Agents (OTA) adds an extra layer of cost and makes true price discovery impossible due to opaque pricing strategies followed by the OTAs. It is also easier to make last minute bookings and modifications while dealing directly with the airlines. Most OTAs have a blackout period, hence in many cases flights which are displayed on airlines' site - as well as on iXiGO.com, may not even get displayed on the OTA!

We guess these are reasons enough for smart corporate users from firms as diverse as Puma, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, ITC, L&T, Ranbaxy (and more...) to patronize iXiGO.com! :-)