Business Travel Program - Ways To Improve Your Travel Management

If you’re in travel management, you know how hard it is to carry out a business travel program successfully. A lot of times, in spite of working day and night, things don’t go as planned. Many times, there are loopholes in your travel management process. Regardless of the reason, a flawed business travel program harms your image in the travel management market.

Many travel management companies believe that they have used all possible ways to improve their travel management process. There is a good chance that that’s not true. If you’ve noticed your business travel program to give not so great results repeatedly, you need to make some important changes.

Fortunately, we have a few ideas about the common loopholes that are commonly found in a business travel program. Not only that, we have some suggestions to remove those loopholes and make your business travel program better. For this, you must adopt some new practices. Read on for the 5 ways to improve your travel management process.

Fulfill the basic requirements of each traveler

For any business, an official business trip is one of the most complicated expenditures. There are different purposes and targets for each trip, and each traveler has his own requirements that you can’t ignore.

There are things that all business travelers expect you to get for them. The first is smooth and well-timed travel so that they don’t face any sleep-loss. Other than that, they might need a comfortable room with Wi-Fi and an extra day to explore the city.

An office manager would need a travel policy that works. Also, they want such travel management that doesn’t take a lot of time away from other tasks. A finance manager usually needs to be updated about travel expenses to make quick budget decisions.

These requirements will always be there. However, it depends on your company and your client to see if there are other factors as well. Before changing your travel management process, you must list these factors in detail.

Let the traveler’s book for themselves

The main goal of a travel management company is to keep its travelers happy. This can’t be achieved by a business travel program that’s not adaptable.

Many times, travelers prefer booking for themselves, especially without having to check company policy repeatedly. This allows them to choose the things they want, such as lodging, flight carriers and itinerary, without writing long emails, filling out forms and bothering their office and travel manager.

Therefore, self-booking lets them choose the option they like without wasting not only their administration’s time but their own time as well. For this, you need a business travel program where you can use a booking platform that allows travelers to book within their company policy. You can later review the requested bookings with the office manager.

Make your policy and approvals process adaptable

If you decide to use a booking platform, you must use it to fit the travel policy and approvals of your client the way you travel. For this, you need to set and regularly update some factors: your level of control, guidelines based on traveler group, price guidelines of each city, etc.

Some traditional companies don’t allow travelers to book outside of their policy. In such cases, they have the admin book for the travelers, like a travel agent. On the other hand, there are companies that aren’t strict at all and allow their employees to book outside the policy. Then, they just let the admin know by notifying them.

A successful business travel program uses a platform that includes maximum options, allowing the company to do what’s best for it.

The business travel program needs to be detailed, and your approvals process needs to be flexible. With these two, you can get a successful business travel program. You must find a good bad balance of the two for your company, use your data to improve it and get a platform that allows this.

Give travelers direct access to travel support

It is common for a travel manager to receive calls from travelers at unusual hours to rectify their business trip problems. From a wrong room type to lost confirmation numbers, it could be anything. With so many queries and problems, things become very tough for both you and your travelers. They may get frustrated if you are unable to answer or provide the solution that they need. Or they might simply be hesitant to contact you.

A great way to tackle this is to give your travelers direct access to a traveler support team. The best way to achieve this is to use a booking platform that provides great travel support 24/7. For this, you must use a tool that has a well-trained in-house travel support team that is available all the time. If you are able to pull this off, your business travel program will easily become one of the best, and travel management will be much easier for you.

Review your costs as much as you can

We all know how complex business travel expenditures can be, so it is very common for administrators and managers not to be updated with the costs of the travel. Even though a finance manager would know the exact travel costs after a month, it’s highly likely that he doesn’t have a clue what’s happening right now. If you’re unaware of the current state of your travel spend, it is not good.

The finance team is always in the dark because a travel management company mostly sends monthly reports and doesn’t give the immediate ability to the team to log in and review the costs. Then, the finance team tries to play catch-up and cuts costs after they have spent more than enough. Instead, they should be able to make immediate budgetary decisions.

With immediate insight into your travel spend, the finance team can not only track it but also make any necessary decisions to prevent excessive spending.

This does not mean that your quarterly and monthly reviews are useless. They’re important for the finance and operation teams to review the effect and value of the business trips and the overall business travel program.

Other than reviewing the travel spends immediately, you need to make sure that your data is detailed as well. You need to be able to categorize the data in a number of ways. Otherwise, you won’t be able to determine the efficiency of any business trip and manage it properly.

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