Many business travelers these days travel frequently for work purposes. But most of them lack experience and expertise in making travel plans.
In addition, they must manage common business travel challenges like delayed flights, disappointing hotel rooms, and tracking expense receipts.
To make it easier for employees to plan business trips and deal with travel contingencies, many enterprises employ a corporate travel consultant. A business travel consultant or corporate travel agent is a professional who helps employees organize business trips and make travel arrangements without putting in extra time or effort.
ITILITE’s company travel software is a complete solution to a company’s business travel challenges. ITILITE’s software offers a self-booking tool as well as an integrated travel management company. It has partnered with the top vendors to provide employees with the largest inventory of flights, hotels, cabs, etc. Moreover, It has an algorithm that displays the best trip options for managers and reduces manual efforts of scrolling through long lists by enabling them to book their own trips in less than 90 seconds on its intuitive user interface.
Thestrong comeback of business travelis making companies increase the number of domestic and international business trips. Employees have started traveling to various destinations regularly to accomplish specific business travel goals.
Also, they will get opportunities to blend work commitments and leisure activities by leveraging the bleisure travel benefits supported by employers. While traveling for work, employees these days have the option to leverage different bleisure options.
For instance, some employees can extend work trips for leisure purposes, while others can enjoy work trips with family or friends. That is why; every employee must refer to the organizational travel policies to decide the right way to blend work and leisure during business trips. Also, they should follow some simple best practices to enjoy the bleisure trip along with achieving business travel goals.
10 Ways Business Travelers Can Enjoy Bleisure Trips in the Right Way
1. Prioritize Work over Leisure
Organizations support bleisure travel to make business trips successful by keeping employees stress-free. While planning bleisure trips, you must prioritize work over leisure. You need to ensure that the extended work trip does not impact the outcome of the meeting.
For instance, you should consider flying out earlier when there is a tight deadline for the commencement or completion of an important project. Likewise, you should not indulge in leisure activities when your coworkers have to work longer hours on the project.
2. Maintain Transparency
Many companies these days allow employees to combine work and leisure while updating travel policies after the pandemic. But they require employees to get approval from managers or the HR department to indulge in leisure activities during business trips.
You must convey your intention to combine work and leisure while sending business travel requests. Transparency is essential to avoid misunderstandings with coworkers or superiors after the business trip.
3. Comply with Organizational Travel Policy
Companies these days define reimbursable and non-reimbursable travel expenses by implementing elaborate travel policies. They reimburse most travel expenses incurred by an employee for work purposes.
But they reimburse only specific expenses incurred by employees for leisure purposes. You must understand your organization’s travel policy to identify reimbursable leisure costs. The understanding will help you avoid overspending and speed up travel expense reimbursements.
4. Include Weekends in the Trip Schedule
You can indulge in additional leisure activities on the business trip by spending a weekend in the business travel destination. While scheduling professional activities, you should explore ways to avoid paid leaves by leveraging weekends.
You can leverage weekends by arriving at the destination on Saturday or leaving the destination on Sunday. However, you must not miss the chance to add two weekends to week-long business trips.
5. Customize Your Travel Packing List
While making trip-specific travel packing lists, work travelers prioritize business attire or formal attire over casual attire. But you have to make several changes to the business travel packing list if you want to combine work and leisure.
Your updated travel packing list should include active casual, rugged casual, and smart casual attires along with flip flops. However, you must not forget to include a swimsuit which you can wear while relaxing by the pool in the hotel.
6. Spend Time with Friends
Many companies these days allow employees to take their partner, family member, or friend on bleisure trips. You should request your partner or friend to join you on the bleisure trip if your company’s travel policies allow it.
Otherwise, you can use the bleisure trip as an opportunity to spend time with your friends living in the business travel destination. They will help you experience the distinct culture of the city by interacting with the local people.
7. Plan Leisure Activities in Advance
Bleisure trips are much shorter than leisure trips. You get opportunities to indulge in leisure activities for a few days after completing work commitments. That is why; you must decide the things to do and places to see in the travel destination in advance.
Also, you can enjoy the trip more by doing the things you want to do. For instance, you should spend a short time exploring museums and art galleries if you are interested in experiencing the city’s artistic heritage.
8. Make the Most Out of the Downtime
You can extend work trips for leisure purposes if your company supports bleisure travel. But you can make a work trip more exciting only by making the most out of the downtime. You can explore the city’s distinct culture after completing work commitments by joining heritage walks, visiting eateries popular with local people, and taking leisurely walks.
9. Consider Exploring a Different City
Europe and America create opportunities for you to explore multiple cities during the same bleisure trip. You can travel from one popular travel destination to another in a few hours by taking a train ride. While planning bleisure trips, you should explore ways to spend time in cities other than the business travel destination. You can make the bleisure trip more exciting by experiencing cultural differences between two popular cities.
10. Focus on Safety and Security
Companies ensure the safety and security of employees traveling for work by meeting duty of care responsibilities. Most companies these days implement business travel management software that comes with a built-in duty-of-care solution. Employees can access the software to manage travel risks by getting support in real-time.
But organizational travel policies often extend the duty of care solutions only to the business part of the business trip. Employees have to explore ways to remain safe and secure during an extended business trip. Hence, you must focus on remaining safe while indulging in leisure activities if your company does not extend the duty of care solution for the entire bleisure trip.
Conclusion
Most organizations these days support bleisure travel to make business trips successful by keeping work travelers stress-free. Hence, work travelers have the option to indulge in leisure activities before or after meeting work commitments. But they must prioritize work commitments over leisure activities. Also, they should follow some best practices to manage work and leisure efficiently and simultaneously.
Business travel ismaking a strong comebackafter the pandemic. Your company or startup can leverage the comeback of business travel to earn incremental revenue. But you cannot get a higher ROI on business travel only by increasing the number of domestic and business trips.
What's the best travel management system for your business? We break down the difference between online and offline bookings, how to choose the right system for you, and more.
In addition to increasing the business travel budget, your organization must focus on boosting the business travel experience and ensuring business traveler safety. At the same time, you need to explore ways to beat global information by controlling ongoing work travel costs.
Your company can save time, resources, and costs by automating business travel management. A cloud-based travel management system helps your organization automate business travel management without increasing upfront and recurring infrastructural costs.
But you should remember that travel management software differs primarily in the category of features. You can streamline the entire business travel management efficiently only by investing in a travel management system that comes with robust features. You can even use features as the primary criteria to choose the right travel management system for your business.
9 Features You Must Consider While Choosing a Travel Management System
1. Travel Policy Implementation
You can make it easier for employees to plan business travel and get travel expenses reimbursed by implementing a clearly-defined travel policy. However, it is also important to help employees understand the business travel rules and access the latest travel rules.
The right travel management system will make it easier for you to implement custom travel policies. Also, employees can use the software to access the latest and relevant rules while organizing domestic or international business trips.
2. Travel Policy Compliance
The travel management software enables employees to access the latest travel policies of your company in seconds. But you must remember that work travelers often violate present travel rules unknowingly or unintentionally.
You can make every employee comply with preset travel policies by showing in-policy travel options. Hence, you should opt for a travel management system that shows in-policy travel options to employees and sends automated notifications each time it detects a travel policy violation.
3. Travel Request Approval Workflow
While making organizational travel policies, you must focus on streamlining and centralizing the business travel approval process. Your policies must clearly define who the approvers are and what each of them can approve. You can further speed up the approval process through automation.
You should implement a travel management system that enables travelers to send work travel requests to the right approver. At the same time, the software will make the approver approve or decline the business travel request while mentioning the reasons.
4. Booking Options and Assistance
Most work travelers expect employers to allow them to book their choice of business travel products and services. You can meet this expectation of employees by choosing a travel management system featuring built-in self-booking tools.
While making business travel arrangements, employees can use the tool to book their choice of flight, accommodation, and car rental. However, you can help employees get relevant assistance while booking travel products by opting for software that supports self-travel booking and managed travel booking at a time.
5. Extensive Travel Inventory
The choice of business travel solutions differs from one employee to another. For instance, some employees love to stay in one of the safer hotels, while others prefer stress-free accommodation. You can meet the varying needs and preferences of work travelers only by allowing them to access an extensive travel inventory.
Many travel management systems enable work travelers to access extensive travel inventory. Employees can further use the same software to compare various travel inventory options. It is one of the features that will help you boost meet employees’ work travel experiences.
6. Negotiated Corporate Rates
The cost of business travel willcontinue to rise in the near future. Your business has to explore ways to curtail costs without affecting employees’ work travel experiences. You can control business travel costs effectively by investing in software provided by a leading travel management company.
The software will provide employees with access to an extensive travel inventory. At the same time, it will make them book flights, accommodations, and cabs at discounted rates. You should prioritize travel management systems that offer negotiated rates.
7. Travel Analytics
The inflationary phase of the global economy increases business trip costs consistently. Your business can get higher ROI only by controlling business travel expenses. That is why; you need actionable insights gained by analysis of historical travel data of employees.
The new-generation travel management systems consolidate large volumes of travel data and analyze the data using analytics. Some of these actionable insights provided by the software will help you control business travel costs, while others will help you finetune your organization’s travel policies.
8. Duty of Care Solution
You can make employees engage in international travel confidently only by keeping them safe and secure. While comparing travel management systems, you should check if the software features a duty-of-care solution.
Employees can access the duty of care solution to manage emerging travel risks by getting real-time support. However, you need to prioritize software that enhances employee safety by providing multi-level support, delivering the latest travel information, and supporting employee tracking.
9. Travel Expense Management
A delay in travel expense reimbursements often makes employees experience stress after business trips. You can speed up travel expense reimbursements by investing in unified travel and expense management software.
The software will help employees to submit travel expense claims by generating automated expense reports based on scanned receipts. Also, it will accelerate expense approval and payment while ensuring travel policy compliance and preventing expense fraud.
Conclusion
The right travel management software will help your company keep work travelers safe and stress-free without increasing costs. But you must focus on investing in a travel management system that meets your organization’s requirements and budget. It is always important to choose software that employees can access anytime and anywhere using their smartphones or tablets.
At the same time, you should ensure that the travel management system can be customized, extended, and scalable according to changing business needs. Also, your company can gain a competitive advantage by choosing software that leverages cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics.
According toa recent surveyby the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), businesses have been spending more on international business travel and allowing non-essential business travel.
The double-digit increase in business travel transactions indicates more and more employees engaging in domestic and international business travel after the pandemic.
But business travel often impacts the mental health of employees traveling for work adversely. Many corporate professionalsexperience stress, anxiety, and depression due to frequently traveling to various business travel destinations. Every work traveler can manage stress during, before, and after business trips by following some simple tips or best practices.
7 Ways Work Travelers can Manage Stress before Business Trips
1. Prepare an Elaborate Business Travel Itinerary
You have to visit multiple places and engage in various activities during the business trip. Hence, you should prepare a business travel itinerary to access important information like meeting schedules, flight times, hotel addresses, local transportation, and day-to-day activities.
2. Make a Travel Packing Checklist
You will experience stress when you do not find the necessary documents or accessories while traveling for work. You must make a destination-specific travel packing checklist to ensure that you can access clothing, toiletries, medication, safety items, and important documents instantly.
3. Book Tickets Early
Organizational travel policies these days make employees book flights, accommodations, cabs, and other business travel solutions early. Also, you can get your choice of seat and stay in a stress-free accommodation by booking business travel early.
4. Try to Reduce Flight Time
As highlighted byseveral studies, travelers experience negative emotions like tension when they spend time at altitudes. You can easily reduce stress and anxiety by spending less time at altitudes. That is why; it is always important to book direct flights instead of connecting flights while engaging in international business travel.
5. Recheck Your Digital Devices
Before the scheduled departure, you must not forget to charge your laptop, smartphone, tablet, and other digital devices. Also, you should ensure that electronic chargers and adapters are stored properly in your suitcase.
6. Stay Active and Hydrated
Many work travelers become dehydrated during air travel due to dry air and low humidity. You must keep yourself hydrated by drinking plenty of water before boarding. At the same time, you can stay active by sleeping adequately before boarding an early flight.
7. Prepare to Manage Air Travel Issues
Despite making business travel arrangements properly, you cannot rule out issues like flight delays, flight cancellations, and lost luggage. You can manage these unpredictable issues in air travel by getting real-time assistance.
Hence, you must install the necessary apps on your mobile device and note down the contact information of the person who will assist you in case of emergencies.
7 Ways Work Travelers Remain Stress-Free during Business Trips
8. Eat Stress-Relieving Foods
While exploring a city’s food culture, work travelers forget that certain foods increase stress and anxiety. You can remain stress-free during business trips only by avoiding stress-causing foods like fried snacks, fast foods, sugar, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, and caffeine. At the same time, you should consume stress-relieving foods like oatmeal, green leafy vegetables, walnuts, and dark chocolate.
9. Get Enough Sleep
You should remember that sleep deprivation and poor sleep affect your mood and make you experience stress. You can tackle a day’s stress efficiently during business trips only by getting adequate sleep. Like other business travelers, you might find it difficult to maintain a healthy sleep pattern while traveling. But you must try to sleep properly throughout the business trip.
10. Keep Your Body Hydrated
Some work travelers experience stress due to dehydration, while dehydration makes make business travelers experience stress. You can manage stress only by drinking water adequately and regularly while traveling.
However, you must not increase water intake by drinking alcoholic or sugary beverages. Instead, you should carry a water bottle and get it refilled throughout the business trip.
11. Practice Meditation
In addition to reducing stress, meditation produces a deep sense of relaxation. You should practice meditation to relax and refresh your mind while traveling for business purposes. However, you can relieve stress quickly only by focusing your attention and removing jumbled thoughts from your mind. At the same time, you should stay healthy by finding time to walk or run.
12. Connect with Friends and Family
Many people experience stress when they feel lonely. You cannot connect with your family and friends while traveling. But you can avoid social isolation by staying connected with them through instant chats and phone calls.
13. Keep Expense Receipts Organized
You will need expense receipts after the business trip to prepare and submit expense reports. You can reduce the time and effort required to prepare an expense report simply by keeping receipts organized during the business trip. You should use an efficient receipt management system that stores the receipts digitally by taking their picture and transferring it to cloud storage.
14. Take Advantage of Downtime
You have to focus on achieving predefined business travel goals throughout the work trip. Hence, you will experience stress regularly while traveling. You can stay relaxed after meetings by taking advantage of the downtime. You should use the downtime to relieve stress by enjoying dinner, relaxing by the pool, or exploring the city by walking.
3 Ways Work Travelers Relieve Stress after Business Trips
15. Submit Expense Reports Early
Most work travelers experience stress when there is a delay in travel expense reimbursements. You can get travel reimbursed quickly by submitting expense reports early. You must leverage the business travel management software implemented by your company to generate automated expense reports in less time simply by scanning expense receipts.
16. Rejuvenate and Reenergize Your Body
You must wait to go to the office after the business trip. It is always important to allow your body to recover by drinking plenty of water, eating stress-relieving foods, and adhering to your exercise routine. It is always advisable to work from home for several days before returning to your office.
17. Identify the Main Causes of Stress
The causes of stress vary from one business traveler to another. You can manage travel-related stress efficiently in the future only by identifying the specific causes of stress. The understanding will make you remember the measures taken by you to manage stress while planning business trips in the future.
Conclusions
Companies and startups these days protect work travelers’ mental health in various ways. In addition to keeping their travel policies flexible, they implement feature-richbusiness travel management software.
The software helps work travelers manage stress levels by providing multiple options, relevant information, and real-time support to employees. Employees must leverage travel management software to protect their mental health despite engaging in business travel regularly.
Companies and startups organize team meetings regularly to discuss ideas, finetune strategies, collect feedback, or find solutions to specific problems. But some companies organize onsite meetings, while others opt for offsite meetings.
An offsite meeting is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a meeting that takes place outside of the office.
As the name suggests, onsite meetings are held within the office premises and often in conference rooms. On the other hand, companies plan offsite meetings outside of the office. Many companies keep the environment relaxing by holding offsite meetings in holiday retreats.
Likewise, many organizations boost managers’ creativity by making them indulge in exciting leisure activities. Hence, an offsite meeting differs from an onsite meeting in many aspects. We can understand what an offsite meeting is based on these major differences.
How does an Offsite Meeting differ from an Onsite Meeting?
Location
Onsite and offsite meetings differ from each other primarily in the category of location. Onsite meetings are held inside office premises, while offsite meetings are held outside of the office.
Arrangements
While organizing an onsite meeting, companies have to make arrangements for meals, snacks, beverages, writing accessories, and other items. But offsite meeting packages include facilities and technologies required by a company to organize an offsite meeting successfully.
Interruptions and Distractions
While attending onsite meetings, employees get distracted by their coworkers and professional responsibilities. But employees can attend offsite meetings without frequent interruptions and disruptions.
Environment
While attending an onsite meeting, employees feel like spending time in the office. But they feel relaxed while attending an offsite meeting. The relaxing environment promotes team collaboration and fosters brainstorming.
Costs
Companies can organize onsite meetings regularly without escalating ongoing expenses. But they have to incur additional expenses to hold offsite meetings successfully.
Why do Companies Organize Offsite Meetings?
Allow Face-to-Face Interactions
Most businesses these days operate in distributed environments. Onsite employees and remote employees stay connected in the distributed working environment through calls, emails, and instant messages. Companies make onsite and remote employees connect and network face-to-face by organizing offsite meetings.
Foster Creativity
While attending an offsite meeting, employees spend time in a different and relaxing environment. Many employees even feel like taking a break while attending an offsite meeting. The change in the physical environment makes them creative and come up with innovative ideas. The unleashing of creativity often results in brainstorming fresh ideas.
Make Employees Focus
As noted earlier, employees are not distracted while attending an offsite meeting. The absence of distractions and interruptions makes them focus better on problems. They can further come up with ideas to solve specific problems.
Opportunities to Build Relationships
While planning an offsite meeting, the organizer can make participants indulge in various team-building activities. The team building activities bring employees together and make them relate with each other. The relationships will make them improve processes and solve problems in the future by becoming a single team.
Leverage New Technologies
Most companies do not upgrade their conference rooms by installing the latest communication tools. But offsite meeting venues impress clients by installing the latest audio-visual communication tools. The access to new communication technology will make the participants focus only on improving presentations and finding solutions.
How can Companies Organize Offsite Meetings Successfully
Inviting Selected Employees
Companies hold offsite meetings with the aim of discussing new ideas and solving existing problems. They have to consider more ideas, opinions, and perspectives when a large number of employees attend the offsite event.
Companies often restrict the number of participants to make managers focus on core topics of discussion. Also, the decrease in the number of participants makes it easier for managers to plan offsite meetings.
Choosing the Perfect Venue
While planning an offsite meeting, decision-makers have the option to choose from many venues. Many hotels and resorts provide customizable offsite meeting packages at negotiated rates.
Also, many decision-makers keep the participants relaxed and excited by choosing outdoor venues or theme parks. But they ensure that the meeting venue is equipped with modern audio and visual communication tools.
Creating and Sharing Meeting Agenda
Employees often feel like taking a break from work while attending offsite meetings. Despite keeping participants relaxed and excited, organizers must ensure that all topics are discussed elaborately in a short span of time.
Hence, they create well-structured meeting agendas that clearly define the goal of the meeting and the topics to be discussed. They further share the meeting agenda with participants in advance to make it easier for them to research and prepare.
Keeping Participants Excited
Excitement and engagement are two elements that make corporate employees unleash their creativity. Companies make offsite meetings successful by keeping participants excited in a variety of ways. Organizers make participants connect and interact using icebreakers.
They make onsite and remote employees introduce themselves in funny ways. Also, they plan team-building activities that keep participants excited and strengthen relationships. These exercises prepare participants to delve into serious topics and issues with open minds.
Continuing the Momentum
Offsite meetings create opportunities for onsite and remote employees to bond and collaborate. Companies leverage the connection to improve operational efficiency and solve recurring problems in the future. Organizers document the sessions to capture the ideas and solutions discussed by the participants.
Also, they ensure that each participant understands action items clearly. Participants are requested to share their achievements after the offsite meeting in the form of feedback. At the same time, organizations encourage them to suggest solutions by thinking divergently.
Conclusion
A company or startup can leverage many benefits by holding offsite meetings strategically along with regular onsite meetings. But the organizer can make the offsite meeting successful only by selecting the perfect venue and making it easier for participants to travel to the locations.
Many companies reduce the time and resources required to hold offsite meetings by implementing corporate travel management software. The corporate travel management software eliminates the need for a corporate travel agent and makes it easier for travel managers to make travel arrangements.
