The 2024 guide to corporate travel management

Travel management entails many processes. It is about controlling, tracking, and reporting on a company’s travel expenses, but it also includes everything from the detailed planning of a trip to ensuring that all booking processes are compliant with the company travel policy.Business travel can be managed by an external

corporate travel agency

, an in-house travel manager or by an

admin professional, such as those charged with office management

.Regardless of the role in charge of managing travel, most businesses also rely on a corporate travel platform to track business travel expenses, among other key features.

A corporate travel manager is typically an internal employee who manages the travel programme and all business trips for the entire organisation (an external resource who isn’t on staff is called a

corporate travel agent

).They

set the corporate travel policy

, handle duty of care and risk management, and help the company navigate global business travel in an efficient and effective way.Depending on the size of the organisation, there may either be a whole team of corporate travel managers, or it might fall to someone from the HR or Operations departments. Their key duties include:

A travel buyer is in charge of either purchasing or outsourcing the purchasing of corporate travel. This means partnering with vendors, negotiating rates, and/or choosing a corporate travel management company and overseeing or reviewing their work.The travel buyer typically makes decisions that impact the entire company, not just individual departments.

Updating your travel management process and systems is absolutely a team effort. Depending on your company size, this may require collaboration with:Some colleagues will be heavily involved in the process (such as finance and operations) whereas others will give feedback and approval (such as frequence c-suite travellers).

So, how are companies booking their business trips? Let’s have a look at some of the most-used solutions.

They’re not designed with corporate travel in mind, but many businesses simply book directly on accommodation/airline websites, or use aggregators such as Expedia or Kayak.

Like consumer booking sites, these agencies are traditionally used for leisure trips. Most of these agencies will offer an online booking tool, but when they don’t, the customer needs to request their trip via phone or email.

Corporate travel management software is the future of business travel, and more and more companies are using it for their trips. It’s the best option for all stakeholders involved, which we’ll go into in the next section.However, not all software used to organise corporate travelling is created equal. You’ll need to find a software that suits your company’s needs, matches your tech stack, and generally achieves its goal of making your life easier and your journeys smoother.

These solutions do have their pain points, and there are various issues with using them for organising business trips. Let’s look at the top concerns:

With these three pillars in place, you can bid farewell to manual, complicated booking processes, back-and-forth emails, and requests for reports.

There are multiple ways an

effective corporate travel programme

can be cost-effective, as well as time-effective, for companies looking to book a trip. Let’s look at the top ways they can save you money.

Planning a trip with a consumer booking site, or even with a traditional travel agency, makes your company much more vulnerable to breaches of your travel policy, mistakes which can be extremely costly. An effective business travel agency will make sure to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s necessary to guarantee compliance.

Businesses that use consumer websites or traditional corporate travel agencies are missing out on the cheap accommodation and flight options. Armed with top corporate business travel management softwares which integrate hundreds of travel networks, you’ll be able to easily find and select the best opportunities for cost savings.

Business trips can be costly as travel expenses spin out of control, but there are ways to keep your foot on the brake. The best way to do this is to use a

travel booking tool

that easily integrates with your expense solution. With these tools in place, you’ll be able to track how much each employee is spending, how much each city or location warrants in terms of a fair budget, and much more.

At companies of any size, here’s how to manage corporate travel:

It’s no surprise that with the advent of online booking sites, businesses around the globe started to book travel on consumer sites.Guess what happens when a business is using consumer tools to book travel? The CFO lacks oversight, and so is forced to become the bad cop. Finance departments are forced to micromanage travel spend for every department, in a way that’s overly conservative and controlling.You can’t get the transformation without the tech. The first step in managing travel the modern way is to select a tool built on trust, transparency, and (don’t forget) simplicity.Here are the main features to look out for in your new travel management platform:

Providing travel support 24/7 isn’t easy, unless you’re a vampire who never sleeps. If you’re not Count Dracula (and you like your free time), you can get hit with cancellations, changes and other requests on nights and weekends, or have these things consume your workday so that you have to work longer hours in order to wrap up important projects.And, if you’re unavailable to help, then travellers get stuck waiting for fixes, and ultimately this costs the business time and money. The logical solution is to rely on a partner who can deliver 24/7 travel support so you, as an office manager or travel manager, don’t have to.

Many office managers and travel managers are still hands-on with travel (and all of its last-minute problems), and that’s great. The point is having a partner that’s available when you’re not, so you can choose what’s important for you to handle, and where you can get help.It’s also important to mention that companies have a duty of care towards travelling employees, with a plan in place to care for them. An effective plan will evaluate travel risk, both foreseeable and unforeseeable risks, aiming to intercept dangerous circumstances and avoid legal ramifications. Traveller safety is paramount, particularly when you’re responsible for your employees.In addition to getting coverage for routine trip support like changes and cancellations, you’ll also want to look into getting help booking group trips. Large trips of 8 or more people can really weigh down the office management team. When vetting tools, see if they’ll help book group travel for you, including negotiating on the price.

Automating your travel policy

creates a trio of benefits in your business travel management processes. You

increase travel policy compliance

and maintain it around the clock. The administrative team saves time because they’re no longer booking all trips. Travellers get to experience the freedom of booking for themselves.Do certain departments, offices or specific travellers have unique travel needs? If so, your travel policy will be more complex, as you won’t have one policy that works for the entire company.For most companies, these are the basic factors that their travel policy or business travel programme requires:But that’s just the beginning! You can get more specific, such as setting clear cost control of hotels per city, for example.

When setting up automated travel policies you have different options for how strict or lenient you want to be. Here are 3 very different styles, when it comes to automating policies and approving trips that are outside of the limits:If a traveller attempts to book a trip that is outside of policy, you want to have a simple approval process in place. The traveller should be able to request approval inside of the app, which will notify the admin. No need to write emails!Next, you need to decide who is approving the trips: the office manager, corporate travel manager, CFO, or multiple department leads?For an admin who is regularly approving trips, one of the most helpful things is a platform that shows you all the trips waiting for your approval right inside the dashboard. That way you have a central location for every trip that’s still in-progress and you never have to search your email for anything.

Effective corporate business travel management isn’t just for your admin team. Expense management in collaboration with your finance and operations teams is also really important. Why? You want travel spend reporting that is not only accurate but insightful!By using cost centers, labels and by making sure all of your trips are available in the reporting tool, you can generate smart reports that will help the finance team identify trends, leaks, and opportunities for budget optimisation.

The most important thing in modern travel management is that it serves the whole entire company. We’ve talked about equipping travellers with stellar support. We’ve talked about

saving time as an admin

. So what about finance?Here’s what the finance team wants and needs:

The impact of business travel on the environment has long been clear, and demands attention. Adopting carbon footprint monitoring tools and carbon offsetting capabilities is becoming an increasing priority for companies when it comes to booking corporate trips.More and more resources are becoming available designed to help business travellers understand their carbon impact, choose sustainable alternatives and offset their carbon footprint.These resources aren’t just for clearing consciences, but for complying with legislation, which is heading

more towards transparency and responsibility

when reporting on a company's impact on the environment.Here are some simple steps you can take to implement a

more environmentally-friendly travel policy

.