ORLANDO, Fla. – A new "playbook" available to GBTA Convention 2015 attendees helps travel managers influence the spending decisions of their travelers. Up your game: Build a social community of travelers explains the value of building a social community among business travelers and shows how to create a shared sense of purpose to influence them.

Modeled after playbooks for sports teams, Up your game includes sections on kicking off a traveler engagement program, training and set up, game day strategies, keeping score and bench strength. The playbook teaches travel managers how to:

• Create a sense of community and collaboration among travelers
• Establish an identity for travel programs that travelers trust and respond to
• Create traveler communications that influences choice, leverage existing tools and support the goals of the corporate travel program
• Link engagement initiatives directly to program results

The underlying goal behind traveler engagement is to bring more spend under travel management and gain visibility into that spend. Increasingly, a program's success hinges on traveler engagement to drive compliance to preferred suppliers, decrease travel costs, improve traveler satisfaction and mitigate risk.

"Traditional methods to delivering on travel program goals just don't cut it anymore," said Lesley O'Bryan, area lead of Advito's Emerging Practices. "Corporate travelers come to work with consumer expectations and a consumer's mindset. Traveler engagement uses consumer-oriented marketing strategies to win them over and get them all working together to achieve business goals."

Registered GBTA attendees can get a copy of the playbook by visiting booth #1945.

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