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In our Buyer Spotlight series, we sit down with corporate travel buyers across the Asia Pacific region to understand how they’re navigating the realities of managing travel programmes today — from compliance and cost pressures to supplier relationships and technology adoption.

By asking the same questions of buyers across different organisations and markets, we’re able to surface common challenges, contrasting approaches, and shared lessons that can help the wider business travel community learn from one another.

This time, we spoke with Bee Lian Lim, who shared her perspective on managing an APAC travel programme with a strong focus on compliance, consolidation, and the importance of relationships in driving success.
 

Q1: What’s the biggest challenge you’re currently facing in your travel programme?

“Compliance to book preferred hotel and NDC fares offered by airlines.”

Compliance remains a critical — and ongoing — challenge for many APAC travel programmes. Even when preferred hotel programmes and airline NDC fares are in place, ensuring travellers consistently book within policy can be difficult, particularly across multiple markets and traveller profiles.

Bee Lian’s response highlights the gap that often exists between programme design and day-to-day booking behaviour.

Q2: How are you balancing cost control and traveller experience across such a diverse region?

“Consolidation of travel with preferred vendors helped small to mid-size travel program.”

For Bee Lian, consolidation is a key lever. By focusing spend with preferred vendors, smaller and mid-sized travel programmes can strengthen their buying power while simplifying the traveller experience.

It’s a reminder that scale isn’t just about size — it’s about focus, consistency, and clarity across suppliers.

Q3: What do you wish more suppliers understood about supporting buyers in the Asia Pacific region?

“The need to standardise process, the challenges we faced from leadership in terms of cost reduction and leadership’s expectation to get more from suppliers.”

Bee Lian points to the pressure travel managers often face internally — balancing leadership’s expectations around cost reduction with the need for reliable service and support.

Standardised processes and clearer value propositions from suppliers can go a long way in helping buyers meet these expectations, particularly in a region as operationally complex as APAC.

Q4: How are you using data to make travel programme decisions more strategic?

“For supplier performance monitoring e.g. turnaround response time, travel satisfaction, identify travel trends and compliance behaviour etc.”

Data plays a practical role in Bee Lian’s programme, supporting supplier management and policy optimisation. Monitoring response times, traveller satisfaction, trends, and compliance behaviour enables more informed conversations — both internally and with suppliers.

Q5: What technologies have made the biggest impact on your team this year?

“Online booking & profiling.”

While simple, Bee Lian’s answer speaks volumes. Effective online booking tools and accurate traveller profiles remain foundational technologies for improving compliance, visibility, and the overall traveller experience — particularly for lean teams managing multiple priorities.

Q6: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to a peer managing travel across the region?

“Relationship and networking drives success. Go out and exchange ideas and learn from each other.”

A fitting way to close — and a sentiment that sits at the heart of the Buyer Spotlight series itself. In a region as diverse as APAC, strong relationships and open knowledge-sharing remain some of the most valuable tools a travel manager can have.

Bee Lian Lim’s insights reflect the realities many APAC travel managers face: driving compliance, consolidating spend, managing leadership expectations, and relying on strong supplier and peer relationships to make it all work.

Her emphasis on networking and collaboration is a timely reminder that progress in corporate travel doesn’t happen in isolation — it happens when buyers come together to share experiences and learn from one another.

Want to connect with travel leaders like Bee Lian Lim?
Registration is now open for Business Travel Show Asia Pacific 2026. Register today and join over 500 corporate travel professionals and industry experts to connect, exchange ideas, build relationships, and shape the future of corporate travel in the region.