The last few years have been a lesson in why meeting face-to-face is crucial for most companies. From vendee vanquishment to managing widely sparse teams, 86% of surveyed workers personal they felt travel was essential to succeed in their role.
Keen to alimony their competitive edge, organizations have been quick to get their teams when on the road. The first quarter of 2022 vacated saw increasingly corporate travel bookings than half of 2021.
But it’s not easy. Saving money on merchantry travel requires effort from all employees, not just a new top-level approach. From the finance manager looking to reel in yearly costs, to the travel manager bogged lanugo with details and wanting to please coworkers, to the weary traveler who may finger the need to spend increasingly in a pinch—this is a team effort.
We’ve put together a list of clear, useful ways to get your whole team on board.
1. Get wangle to lower and largest flight inventory
One of the wool weightier ways to immediately start slashing travel financing is to get largest flight inventory.
Businesses that use corporate travel agents or typesetting on websites designed for leisure trips are missing out big time.
Booking far in advance, booking last minute, using budget-friendly carriers like EasyJet and Norwegian…consumers have tons of tricks up their sleeves for saving money on travel, and when businesses are stuck in old corporate travel solutions, then they lack opportunities for forfeit savings.
Now, businesses have a trick up their sleeve too: TravelPerk. TravelPerk offers a world-class inventory for booking negotiated rates in one place by integrating hundreds of the weightier travel networks.
2. Encourage trip flexibility
Whether the employee is visiting a vendee or staffing a new office, there may be some flexibility in the dates of the event. When a travel manager, office manager, or executive teammate is booking a new trip for an employee they need to know if there is any wiggle room. And there scrutinizingly unchangingly is.
When employees request new bookings, whether that be on a standard request form or via email for new bookings, ask for 3 arrivals and departures in order of preference so employees can requite options up front
Discovering that wiggle room can midpoint saving as much as 50% on flights and hotels. Largest still, permitting employees to typesetting their own travel via a corporate booking tool will help travelers get increasingly visibility and control, permitting them to optimize their schedule to save money without all the email back-and-forth.
However, plane with the weightier organization, plans sometimes change. Vendee meetings get canceled or rescheduled, employees get sick. A solution like FlexiPerk offered by TravelPerk, gives corporate travelers the most generous receipt policies available.
With FlexiPerk, 100% of travel arrangements are refundable. Travelers can cancel their plans with just one click up to two hours surpassing departure, no questions asked. Guaranteeing a minimum refund of 80% and saving businesses an stereotype of 40% compared to other flexible fares, travel managers and finance teams never have to sweat well-nigh losing vast sums to last-minute changes again.
3. Craft a corporate travel policy
Having a corporate travel policy is crucial. Without these parameters, an employee cannot possibly know if their intended itinerary falls within the upkeep and other visitor expectations.
Knowing the full telescopic of what should be included in a successful travel policy can be challenging. At TravelPerk, we have crafted a customizable travel and expense policy template that can help you implement a corporate travel policy in minutes, but generally, corporate travel policies should outline the company's position on elements such as;
- Approvable merchantry travel spend for air travel, accommodation, car rental, and other transportation.
- Rules virtually employees booking flights in economy versus merchantry class.
- The clearance process for booking hotels, airline tickets, and other ground arrangements for corporate travel.
- Permitted per diem expenses and whether a merchantry credit vellum will be provided.
- Reimbursement and expense report processes.
Corporate travel policies should be clear, concise, and easy to access. But like any visitor policy, they need to grow and transmute to the needs of the business.
Thanks to online tools like TravelPerk, finance and travel managers can now incorporate their travel policies into the booking process on desktop and mobile devices; helping to automate the approvals process.
With 72% of millennial employees content to typesetting their own merchantry travel plans, streamlined approvals make it easier for employees to stay on upkeep while enjoying autonomy over their arrangements.
4. Get well-spoken on compliance
By integrating corporate travel policies into the booking process and automating clearance systems, TravelPerk has been worldly-wise to help organizations reach a 95% compliance rate with their online booking platform.
With an online booking tool, finance and travel managers can establish well-spoken clearance processes. Perhaps you still want to have vision on every itinerary. Or maybe you are happy for trips within your travel policy to be automatically tried to ensure you secure the weightier price and self-ruling up time for rented managers. Whatever level of tenancy you want, you can establish straightforward workflows in just a few clicks.
However, there will still be some merchantry trips that fall vastitude the telescopic of any travel policy. For example, sometimes trips at short notice just can’t be avoided. A key vendee calls a slipperiness meeting, or the sales team gets an opportunity to meet a potential lead.
Automated processes can squire with approving these out-of-policy travel arrangements. Rather than relegating itineraries to the recesses of an inbox, an online booking tool can flag non-compliant trips to relevant personnel through defended slack channels.
5. Simplify your VAT savings
If your organization is registered to pay VAT, there are many savings to be made on your travel spend. Depending on your tax jurisdiction, airfares, hotel rooms, and other ground transportation can all be offset as merchantry travel expenses.
But, the VAT recovery process is often a complicated and time-consuming speciality of travel management. Trying to unpick your employees' per diem spend and collect VAT receipts can be a nightmare. Many businesses end up losing out on ultimatum legitimate expenses and the savings they bring. As a merchantry owner, there is nothing increasingly frustrating than losing revenue unnecessarily. A VAT calculator can help you determine how much you could reclaim.
At TravelPerk, we streamline the VAT recovery process for you, helping you save up to 25% on your yearly merchantry travel financing thanks to our itemized reports and handy VAT calculator. Request a demo today and see how much your organization can save.
6. Stay on top of travel spending trends
Knowledge is power. Just as a consumer looking to save money on their household upkeep will need knowledge of what spending categories are swallowing their income, a merchantry needs to understand which aspects of merchantry travel are moving the needle increasingly than others.
Here are some questions you might want to ask:
- Which travelers are amassing the most value of spend?
- What improvements can be made in airport transportation costs, wifi fees, etc.?
- What changes need to take place in Q4 to alimony to the yearly travel upkeep for X team?
Every merchantry wants to optimize their corporate travel budget and acquiring the data to help shouldn’t be hard.
Use a travel booking tool that will integrate with your expensing solution and will auto-generate reports to minimize the strain on employee time. Then use this data to identify trends and optimize your upkeep over time. You can identify what cities and trips need lower budgets, and which warrant higher spending, to increase fairness and get a handle on overall travel spend.
7. Advocate using public or shared transportation where possible
One travel spend that is very worldwide and easy to nip in the bud is driving in large cities. Encouraging employees to take public transport rather than driving and paying extortionate parking fees or taking a taxi is largest for your marrow line and the environment.
When employees are heading to an event from the same location, there is no need for separate transportation. If public transport isn’t an option, having Uber unify multiple cars is easy enough.
Taking these measures isn’t unchangingly possible, but wherever you can, you should persuade your teams not to waste visitor money on unnecessary merchantry travel expenses.
This leads us nicely onto number 8…
8. Be transparent and offer incentives for staying on budget
When wearing travel costs, it’s important to lower the pain for employees. For them to finger invested in the effort, they need to know the “WHY.”
For example, a remote visitor that holds yearly in-person retreats might need to communicate to employees why trips for conferences have to be as unseemly as possible—so the yearly retreat is a increasingly enjoyable wits for all.
There will be a variegated “WHY” at every company. If increasing transparency isn’t all that relevant, then maybe incentives will help. When empowered to requite bonuses like team lunches or mileage points to those who stay on budget, travel managers can help trim the upkeep in a creative way.
9. Be savvy to save on accommodation
If your organization’s policy is based primarily virtually a few favorite hotel chains, you could be missing out on huge savings on your travel expenses. Branching out and considering variegated options such as Airbnb can be increasingly cost-effective and provide a largest travel wits for your employees. Expressly for longer stays, many merchantry travelers might prefer to have wangle to a kitchen so they can eat increasingly healthily, or wish to have increasingly space to work than is traditionally found in a hotel room.
But Airbnb rentals aren't suitable for every merchantry trip. There may not be options misogynist in your destination, or the forfeit for a short stay might be on par with local hotels. In these instances, it might be increasingly cost-efficient to negotiate a corporate room rate or focus on racking up travel rewards with a credit vellum or hotel loyalty program, expressly if you travel to the same location regularly.
Alternatively, travel managers can reduce their rented workloads and save their organizations money by using corporate travel companies with agreements with hotel chains. At TravelPerk, we have an wide-stretching inventory of walk-up available, plus our users can upload their current negotiated rates into our platform.
Ultimately, saving money on travel is a team effort.
By thinking holistically and uncovering how every employee can help, saving money while still taking all those business-critical trips is possible.
Whether you're a travel manager planning for an unshortened organization, a finance team focused on your company's marrow line, or a throne of operations looking for smoother internal processes, TravelPerk can help you streamline every speciality of corporate travel.
