The role and responsibilities of travel managers have been evolving. Travel managers these days analyze employee travel data to gain actionable insights for improving traveler experiences and controlling business travel expenses. However, business travel booking will remain one of the key responsibilities of travel managers like you.
While planning and booking business travel, you have to focus on two important factors. Firstly, your choice of corporate travel booking must keep the work traveler safe and stress-free throughout the business trip. Secondly, you have to ensure that business travel bookings do not violate travel policy and inflate the travel budget.
That is why you need to compare information about flights, hotels, car rentals, and other business travel products from various sources. Also, you have to keep in mind what your business travelers want while comparing various options.
Here are a slew of tips and best practices you should consider while booking business travel tips.
7 Tips Travel Managers Should Remember While Booking Business Travel
1. Understand Your Organization’s Travel Policy
Your organization’s travel policy defines which employees travel, why employees travel, and how employees travel. These factors are crucial prerequisites for corporate travel booking. You must spend some time understanding the organization’s travel policy elaborately.
The initial research with help you answer essential questions like has the company implemented travel management software, has the company hired a business travel agency, and does the company allow employees to book.
Also, you can refer to the business travel policy to identify reimbursable travel expenses and prevent employees from incurring non-reimbursable costs during the business trip.
2. Know
What Business Travelers Want
While booking business travel, you should remember that the travel experience of employees directly impacts the outcome of business trips. Hence, your business travel booking must meet the needs and expectations of work travelers.
That is why; you must spend some time understanding what business travelers want. You can understand the needs and expectations of frequent work travelers by interacting with them regularly. At the same time, surveys conducted by various companies help you know business travel sentiments.
For instance, a Business Travel Show Europe survey suggests that business travelers want more choices, flexibility, and safety in the post-COVID-19 world. You can consider the business travel sentiments to boost business travel booking.
3.
Explore Ways to Get Negotiated Rates
In addition to improving business travel experiences, you must focus on controlling your organization’s work travel costs while booking business trips. You can reduce business travel costs significantly by booking flights, accommodations, and car rentals at discounted or negotiated rates.
But you will find it challenging to get discounted rates by building a network of suppliers or vendors. You can overcome this barrier by partnering with a travel management company or implementing one of the best travelmanagement software.
In addition to facilitating travel booking at discounted rates, the travel management software or company will provide business travelers with options to choose from several airlines, hotel chains, and car rental companies.
4. Create
Business Travel Itineraries
As a travel manager, you have to plan and book business trips regularly for multiple employees. There are always chances that you may not remember the travel itinerary of individual employees. You can record and remember the schedule of events or destinations for every business trip by creating individual itineraries.
The travel itinerary will make it easier for you to book flights, hotels, and car rentals accurately. Also, you can share the itinerary with the work traveler to ensure that she does not miss the flight or run late for an appointment. There are many online tools and templates that help you create travel itineraries without putting in extra time and effort.
5.
Automate Business Travel Booking
You can save both time and effort through the automation of business travel booking. The customizable travel management software solutions allow you to implement policy checks and approval workflows according to your organization’s travel policy.
Also, some of the best travel management software applications feature self-booking and travel expense management tools. You can implement the software to enable employees to book flights, hotels, and car rentals at discounted rates while choosing from multiple vendors and suppliers.
At the same time, the software will help you identify policy violations and travel expense frauds. The analytics used by the software will make it easier for you to control corporate travel costs by identifying unnecessary travel expenses and discovering untapped corporate fares.
6.
Encourage Employees to Reduce Expenses
In addition to meeting travelers’ expectations, you must help your organization control travel expenses. While allowing employees to book trips, you can reduce costs by encouraging them to avoid last-minute bookings.
Likewise, you should encourage and incentivize them to choose low-cost alternatives while booking business travel. You can implement the best travel management software to recommend cost-effective alternatives to employees using analytics when they are comparing flights, hotels, and car rentals.
Also, the software creates opportunities for you to reduce travel costs by running employee incentive programs. You can implement these business travel cost control measures easily while customizing the software.
7. Manage
Unforeseen Circumstances Proactively
Your responsibilities as a travel manager do not end with business travel booking. In addition to simplifying corporate travel booking, you must keep in place a plan to handle unforeseen circumstances associated with the booking.
For instance, you must handle unforeseen circumstances like flight cancellation, flight delays, and hotel booking changes proactively. You need to ensure that employees do not experience stress due to such unanticipated events.
You can easily handle such situations by keeping employees informed about the changes. At the same time, you must follow up with the suppliers or vendors to solve these issues as early as possible.
Conclusion
Your role as a travel manager will evolve consistently. But booking business travel tips will remain one of your primary responsibilities. You can implement these tips or best practices while booking business travel tips to choose/recommend options that improve employees’ business travel experience without escalating your organization’s corporate travel spending.
References
https://www.locomote.com/blog/6-tips-to-how-to-master-corporate-travel-management
https://meonvalleytravel.com/business-travel/10-top-tips-for-booking-corporate-travel/
https://startupxplore.com/en/blog/7-things-every-corporate-travel-manager-should-know-in-2021/
https://salestrip.com/insights/expert-tips-to-improve-corporate-travel-booking/
No comments:
Post a Comment