Vertical Horizonz reduced travel costs by 35%
Nobody got grounded.
How Corporate Traveller helped Vertical Horizonz actively manage their travel program — with
reporting their team actually uses every week, not just receives.
THE PROBLEM
Spend was rising, and nobody had a clear line of sight on why.
Vertical Horizonz trains people to work safely, and that means people on the move: trainers and assessors travelling around New Zealand, with a growing number of trips now reaching into the South Pacific as the business expands.
In a tough economic climate, the brief to Corporate Traveller was blunt: bring travel spend down. But Vertical Horizonz didn't have a clear read on where the money was actually going. Booking habits, incidental costs, who was spending what — it was all a bit of a blur. And they wanted their Regional Managers to start owning travel decisions for their own
patch, which is hard to do without the numbers to back it up.
THE SOLUTION
Visibility first. Then the savings follow
We didn't hand Vertical Horizonz a single fix — we built a stack of small, practical ones that added up.
- A wider rollout of our Power BI reporting tool, with hands-on training for new users — Regional Managers can finally see their own numbers, and travel now gets its own slot in their weekly meetings.
- Early access to our Incidentals reporting trial. Of everything we've built for them, it's the tool their team reaches for most.
- Quarterly spend reporting, backed by half-yearly reviews, to keep tabs on costs and bookinghabits as they shifted.
- A reworked, consolidated invoice that cut month-end reconciliation from several days down to a few hours.
- A soft rate cap on domestic hotel bookings, tracked rather than just set and forgotten — their average domestic rate now sits comfortably under both the cap and the wider industry benchmark.
Their team now checks Power BI every day, and tells us it gives them a clearer read on spend than their own internal finance reporting does. Underneath it all, an online booking tool is doing the heavy lifting on the simple trips. 91% of domestic bookings now happen without a single call or email.
None of this came from grounding people who needed to travel. Essential trips still went ahead, and the travellers who needed comfort and flexibility on the road still had it. The saving came from sharper decisions — fewer unnecessary bookings, better-negotiated rates, and a lot more visibility into where the money was going. NZ
THE PARTNERSHIP
Two people-led businesses, running the same way.
Vertical Horizonz builds its culture around five values: integrity, respect, leadership, empowerment and collaboration. It's the same list we'd reach for to describe how we work with them — open, transparent, and collaborative in practice, not just on a slide.
When Vertical Horizonz talks about their people, that circle includes their employees, their contractors, and their partners. Eleven years in, we're part of it.
It's also a partnership that hasn't stood still. As Vertical Horizonz has grown — more travellers, more regional managers, more markets — what we've built for them has grown with it.
One of the lessons we've learnt is that reducing cost isn't the same as reducing value. Corporate Traveller has helped us gain better visibility of our travel activity, allowing us to make smarter decisions about where travel creates the greatest impact for our learners, customers and people.
- Rozanna Waiari
Head of Business Services, Vertical Horizonz
Ready to get more out of your business travel?
Talk to the Corporate Traveller team today and let's get started.