Business travel is big business in its own right. In fact, globally speaking, business travel exceeds $1 trillion annually. That’s right, over a trillion dollars a year just for business and corporate travel. While that’s great news for airlines, hotels, and car rental services, individual corporations want their corporate travel to prove efficient and cost-conscious.
Considering how problematic most individuals find managing personal travel, that’s no small ask. If you want to keep corporate travel sane in your business, keep reading for five tips that will make it easier.
1. Hire a Travel Manager
If you routinely send employees out of the local area or out of the country, it’s not realistic to expect them to make the arrangements. It’s also not practical to hand that off to a personal assistant or secretary. Making those arrangements can consume someone’s life.
A travel manager acts as a corporate travel agent for your entire business. They also help set and enforce travel policies, as well as negotiate discounts and deals.
2. Get Travel Management Software
Like most things in the modern business world, you can find excellent software out there that streamlines the travel management process. As a bonus, you can typically set travel policies inside the software that will prevent anyone new from booking certain kinds of flights or certain kinds of rooms.
It can also automate approval for portions of corporate travel booking.
It also helps your business keep track of employee locations. When you have 10, or 30, or 50 people traveling, you can forget who went where. Software like this business travel management helps with that.
3. Travel Insurance
There is always some risk attached to travel. If you only send people on business trips once or twice a year, the risks are minimal. If you send people weekly, you should invest in travel insurance for your employees.
At a minimum, consider medical and life insurance coverage. If they go overseas, evacuation coverage can make sense as well.
4. Automate Expense Reporting
There are apps that will let employees scan receipts and other expenses. Most of the time the app will automatically upload the data. Using these apps can eliminate errors and save time wasted on correcting travel expense reports.
5. Solicit Feedback
Ask for feedback from everyone who interacts with the corporate travel process. Find out where people struggle and what works great. Then, find solutions for the things that give everyone problems.
Corporate Travel and Your Business
Corporate travel is an often necessary part of the job for any business that deals with out-of-town suppliers or customers. Unfortunately, it can also prove a drain on your employees’ time.
If your employees travel regularly, hire a travel manager. Get corporate travel management software. Set clear travel policies and program those policies into the software.
Automate travel expense reporting with a connected app. Get feedback from everyone who must use the system and find fixes for the problem areas.
Looking for more business travel management tips? Check out the posts over in our Business and Travel sections.
