If you're handling corporate travel, you’re likely no stranger to a flood of travel requests, itinerary changes, flight issues, and last-minute cancellations filling your inbox. Managing it all via email can lead to delays, missed bookings, and endless back-and-forth communications. Instead of juggling dozens of emails and risking mishaps, it’s time to upgrade your travel management process to a streamlined system.
By implementing an efficient travel management process, you can oversee everything from upcoming trips to real-time bookings, traveler schedules, and post-trip reports—all without relying on email. Here's how you can improve your travel management process in five straightforward steps.
1. Clarify Priorities for All Stakeholders
Corporate travel involves multiple stakeholders, each with their own goals and needs. For a smooth travel management experience, it’s essential to understand and prioritize these requirements from the outset.
For example:
- Business travelers prioritize comfort, avoiding disruptive travel schedules, and may even seek to turn a business trip into a “bleisure” (business + leisure) opportunity.
- Office or travel managers prefer an easy-to-manage travel system that doesn’t eat into their time with complicated bookings or coordination.
- Finance managers need real-time visibility into travel expenses to make cost-efficient decisions and stay within budget.
Start by identifying the priorities for everyone involved in the travel process. Having this clarity will help you build a more tailored and efficient travel management strategy that balances the needs of all parties.
2. Implement Self-Booking Tools for Travelers
Empowering your team to book their own travel can significantly reduce administrative work and boost employee satisfaction. Travelers enjoy the flexibility of choosing their own itineraries, airlines, and accommodation within company guidelines, and can easily track frequent flyer programs.
With a self-booking tool, you eliminate the need for tedious email chains or approval forms. Look for a booking platform that ensures policy compliance while allowing travelers to select their preferred travel options. Some systems even allow travelers to save itineraries for administrative approval if needed, further reducing manual oversight.
3. Simplify Policies and Approval Workflows
A well-organized travel policy is the backbone of efficient corporate travel management. Using a booking platform that enforces travel policy automatically can streamline the entire process. Ensure your platform accounts for:
- Price limits based on travel destination
- Travel insurance requirements
- Group-specific guidelines (e.g., for different teams or roles)
- Approval workflows for trip bookings
Whether your company allows flexible travel booking or requires strict adherence to policy, a tailored platform will save time and ensure all trips are within guidelines.
4. Provide 24/7 Support for Travelers
Relying on your office or travel manager to handle travel issues—especially during off-hours—can be both inefficient and frustrating for travelers. Instead, offer 24/7 support by using a travel management platform with built-in assistance. This ensures travelers have access to immediate help with everything from lost booking confirmations to urgent itinerary changes.
Choosing a platform with robust customer support is key. Ideally, this support should include in-house agents familiar with your corporate travel policies and safety protocols. Not only will this ease the burden on your team, but it also provides travelers with peace of mind, knowing they have access to assistance whenever they need it.
5. Optimize Your Travel Budget with Real-Time Insights
Corporate travel is a major business expense, and keeping track of costs in real time is crucial for staying on budget. With traditional travel management processes, financial visibility often comes after the fact, making it difficult to make timely adjustments.
By leveraging a travel management platform, you can gain immediate insights into travel expenses. This allows finance teams to track spend, generate real-time reports, and analyze historical data to improve future travel budgets. Moreover, granular reporting can help break down costs by project, team, or office, making it easier to manage KPIs related to travel spending.
Improve Your Travel Management Process Today
Effective travel management requires the right tools to keep your travelers happy, your administrators productive, and your expenses under control. Platforms like AirBooking offer a seamless solution, empowering travelers to book within policy, providing 24/7 support, and giving finance teams the real-time data they need to optimize travel budgets.
With the right platform in place, managing corporate travel doesn’t have to be a headache. Just ask Hotjar. Once bogged down with manual bookings and endless email chains, their team now uses an automated system that allows employees to book travel independently, while managers can easily track and oversee bookings. The result? A more efficient travel management process and a happier, more productive team.
