Business travel management is a very complex subject. Discover the many aspect you need to control and discover how to manage it easily.
The world of travel management in 2023 is very comprehensive. Elements like duty of care, traveller safety and satisfaction, managing expenses, sourcing suppliers and many more are only a part of the terms you’ll meet in business travel.
With this complete guide of business travel management, you’ll get the whole overview of not only how to get started, but also how to reorganise or modernise your travel programme.
Business travel is important to your organisation’s business interests. It gives your company a chance to make a face-to-face impact with customers and partners worldwide.
As someone dealing with business travel management, you work at the forefront of a rapidly expanding, trillion-dollar industry. That comes with a lot of responsibility and an in-depth knowledge of business travel management.
The main areas where you will make a difference every day as a business travel manager are:
If you comply and hit every point above, you can manage costs effectively, increase traveller satisfaction and safety and improve policies.
Creating the perfect business travel policy can be done through trial and error. The best starting point is to conduct a SWOT analysis.
Once you’ve gathered input from employees and colleagues, perform a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis. This is a handy tool for gaining an overview of the status quo and figuring out which steps to take next. Here’s an example of some points your travel management SWOT could include:
After completing your SWOT analysis, you’ll know whether your organisation’s travel management programme is already working well. Make sure you design further policies that will take advantage of your strengths and opportunities while trying to balance out weaknesses and threats.
For example, if your company already has very effective lines of communication between travellers and the home office, avoid disrupting this by introducing overly complicated new reporting rules. Or, if your company’s travel needs are very predictable, use this as an opportunity to negotiate stronger partnerships with suppliers.
For each strength you listed above, think of ways to continue using this strength to improve your organisation’s travel programme. If you listed ‘We already have a strong travel policy in place,’ for example, consider working with HR or the training department in your organisation to fully educate employees about the policy and improve compliance even further.
The weaknesses and threats you identified in your SWOT analysis help you determine the areas that need improvement. Use your travel programme’s strengths wherever possible to balance these issues out.
For example, if one of your opportunities is that you have the support and endorsement of your company’s leadership, this can be used to balance out weaknesses like lack of compliance. Leverage your partnerships with internal stakeholders wherever possible.
Teamwork is essential for creating any successful travel programme. If your organisation deals with excessive travel risks (such as dangerous or volatile destinations), you will definitely need a strong travel insurance policy, including the services of a travel security provider.
Think of all the weaknesses and opportunities you’ve identified. Now, see if you can match them with existing strengths and opportunities to balance them out. If not, consider what steps you’ll need to take to balance and overcome your strengths and weaknesses.
If your organisation is dealing with excessive ‘rogue’ travel spending, you may decide to take the following steps:
Following the rules of travel policy is known as travel policy compliance. Your responsibilities as travel manager are important primarily for two reasons:
To ensure travel policy compliance, you need to be realistic and tailor them to your company’s specific situation. The best way is to set flexible, realistic business travel policies.
Your company’s travel policy will be determined by many different factors: the number of travellers, budget, and different classes of travellers. As a business travel manager, you’re responsible for keeping employee travel spending in line with your company’s travel policy. As you will see, the most important part is defining an effective travel policy in the first place.
A business travel manager needs to keep up with a lot of responsibilities. The most important are:
1. Be directly involved in booking
The travel manager may be involved directly in the booking, or the travellers will call or correspond with an external supplier (like a business travel agent) to make travel arrangements. These options vary depending on your company’s size and business travel culture. Some companies have a highly digitised/automated travel culture, whereas others use more traditional methods for making travel arrangements.
2. Determining travel costs
A business travel manager has to have a clear overview of how employees are spending the company’s money, so that valid travel costs can be reimbursed correctly, and spending can be kept within budget.
3. Duty of care
Your responsibility is also towards your travellers. Essentially, duty of care refers to an employer’s legal and financial obligation to provide safe working conditions to its employees. This ranges from ordinary workplace safety precautions to preventive health screening, training and relevant insurance coverage.
4. Managing travel risks
Business travellers are exposed to many kinds of risks that may not affect non-travelling employees. This makes a travel manager’s duty of care responsibilities particularly important. For example, geopolitical unrest, terrorism, abduction, or extreme weather events are all risks that disproportionately impact business travellers compared with other employees of a company.
Special travel insurance is designed to protect travellers and their employers against these risks.
5. Keeping us with business travel trends
Tracking travel spending enables you to spot trends as a business travel manager, so you can help your company to spend its money more strategically. This is another way you contribute to your organisation’s success as a travel manager.
If you spot specific travel trends (like an increase in spending for a specific destination, event or time of the year), your organisation can use these to negotiate better deals with the suppliers your travellers need.
This strategic role for travel management is becoming increasingly important as traditional travel management tasks (like collecting receipts and approving expenses) become increasingly automated by online travel management software.
6. Ensuring traveller satisfaction and being always on-call
Many companies are beginning to recognise the value of business travel as an employee satisfaction and retention tool. Also, business travellers today see travelling for work as a rewarding experience. However, it’s crucial that employers provide an adequate safety net and support system to their travellers. This means establishing clear protocols for what to do in case of an emergency. It also means maintaining open lines of communication. As a business travel manager, you may be expected to remain on call after hours in case a traveller encounters a problem in a destination many time zones away.
7. Make a plan and think ahead
Whether you’re creating a new travel management programme or updating an existing one, it’s vital that you create an action plan to ensure you’ve got everything covered.
Follow our steps here to get your business travel programme up and running in the best possible way:
Controlling costs is an important part of your job as a business travel manager. In many organisations, travel managers even serve an official double role as travel and expense managers. Depending on the size and structure of your organisation, you’ll often work closely with other departments like finance, procurement and HR to handle the way employees spend the company’s money on their business travel arrangements.
Your travel policy should contain rules for how your employees can spend company money on travel, how they are reimbursed for travel expenses and how your company keeps track of employees while they travel.
Most modern business travel programmes use software and web-based services to keep track of travel spending. This is by far the most efficient method, and if you are working for a large company, it will be essential.
Corporate travel is only on the rise for 2023; whether you’re new to business travel management or you’re already working with an existing policy, it’s always good to have a complete guide on hand.
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