The major reason that businesses spend so much time and money on business travel is that they expect positive outcomes out of those trips. Research studies, now and then, show that travel programmes should be tailored in such a way so as to increase the number of positive outcomes instead of putting a cap on spends. Sub-goals may include retaining staff, successful trip and making sure travelling employees stay happy and healthy.
Though business travel management programmes are developed keeping these goals in mind, meeting them can still be an uphill task. If a research study by the Global Business Travel Association is anything to go by, hotel prices are projected to increase at a rate of 3.7%, with airfares predicted to escalate by about 2.6%. What will business travel savings be like in 2019? Here is how you can improve travel cost-savings:
Strike the right balance in 2019:
Companies spending too little on business travel may risk losing business to competition. At the same time, companies fat on business travel may see too much dent on their profit and loss figures. Therefore, companies need to strike the right balance and identify road warriors who can deliver the most value.
Developing a travel policy:
This is a key step towards business travel compliance, and it is important to get travelling employees’ buy-in in key areas such as compliance to negotiated vendors and travel suppliers, allotted accommodation budget, travel class selection, etc with proper communication through HR platform, online booking tool, intranet, and travel management software. Refer to all our previous blogs to learn more about the impact of travel policy on business and corporate travel and how a travel manager can develop one.
Maintain a track of your expenses:
Keeping track of your employee’s bookings, and accounting true travel spends will allow companies ascertain problem areas, make suitable adjustments in their travel policy, re-educate their employees and ensure maximum value is derived out of their travel spend. This may also involve travel managers getting bit more granular with company travel policies to avoid overspend and improve bottom-line.
As we can understand from the blog, there is nothing more to business travel than business (travel? certainly no). We will see more of these quick hacks on how to achieve substantial savings without putting the brakes on the growth potential in the concluding part of this blog.