Carlson Wagonlit Travel is seeking a patent in the US for a travel stress algorithm that is the culmination of 18 months work.
The algorithm aims to measure the financial cost of having unproductive travellers on the road because of travel stress.
The tool has been developed by the CWT Solutions Group and takes into account a wide range of information from the data of more than 15 million trips and traveller demographics to lost luggage information and flight delays from companies including SITA and FlightStats to produce the Travel Stress Index.
CWT believes it can help companies control or address just under a third of its travellers' lost or unproductive time. The travel management firm estimates that stress could be equated to $3.3m for a company with an average of 5,000 trips a year of which about $1m could be addressed.
The company conducted research with nine large customers in October to find out the components of a trip which travellers find most stressful and revealed that the biggest triggers are anything that involves losing time, surprises and anything that impacts routine.
Vincent Lebunetel, EMEA senior director of CWT Solutions Group, says companies need to start involving more than just travel procurement in the process.
"We want to engage with companies to make them realise that beyond the trip there is duty of care and a human being. They should involve human resource, corporate social responsibility and top management.
Whether there is any appetite for looking after and improving the traveller experience is questionable but Lebunetel believes the whole approach ties into improved policy compliance as well.
"It's not looked at as a key priority for travel managers but we want to open the door. It's also an opportunity to illustrate to management complexity of managing business travel, it's a schizophrenic role because they need to meet the demands of management and manage traveller satisfaction."
The TMC has also produced an infographic to put the numbers around its findings: