If you have people that travel on behalf of your business and everyone is managing their own travel, booking, and paying ad hoc over the internet, you must read this article. Why? Because even if you have just one or two key people that travel for work – the time they spend coordinating travel is costing your business time, money, and productivity.
Plus, DIY travel management can hurt more than your bottom line as you’ll read here ….
1. Time wasting costs you money
When your key team members like sales experts or executives are searching and booking their own travel, you may as well be throwing your hard-earned cash out the door. When your team is booking travel randomly over the internet and trying to manage things themselves every minute and every dollar counts. We estimate that a business making on average 50 travel bookings per month can be losing up to $10,000 annually on wasted time by doing it themselves.
Book your travel through a dedicated business travel provider and you’ll save time and money on every booking and your people can get back to doing what they do best – helping to grow your bottom line.
2. Lack of visibility puts travellers at risk and costs you more in the long run
When your travellers are booking trips ad-hoc over the internet – how do you know where they’re travelling to, who they’re booking with, how much they’re spending and if they’re at risk? It’s difficult to provide support for your travellers if you don’t know where they are at any given time. If a severe weather event occurred – how would your business know which travellers were impacted? If you have staff travelling for your business, you have a responsibility for providing a duty of care for your employees.
And if you can’t see how and where your travel dollars are being spent, you have little control over spend, trip approvals or power to leverage a corporate rate with a supplier.
A business travel provider, like Corporate Traveller, will show you how to gain visibility of your bookings and spend with the help of an online booking tool. When the entire booking which can include flights, accommodation, car hire or parking can be made through a single online platform – the consolidation of bookings makes it easier for you to report on your bookings, providing complete transparency of spending and activity.
3. DIY travel management is stressful for your staff and impacts productivity
Feel like your EA or your internal travel coordinator gets a little snippy sometimes? No wonder why! Booking and managing business travel for your boss or anyone, let alone a group of people can be stressful. Generally, EAs or internal travel arrangers already have a full-time workload and then travel is thrown in on top of that. When you’re booking travel for other people, there is a lot of back and forth with colleagues or managers, time spent on searching for options, making the booking, paying, and then liaising with the traveller. Not to mention if there is a travel disruption in the middle of the night or flights get cancelled at the last minute, who’s responsibility is it to manage this?
Partner with Corporate Traveller and you’ll be appointed your own dedicated Travel Manager to handle the overflow work, difficult requests, and last-minute cancellations. Plus, your people have access to Corporate Traveller’s mobile travel app, which keeps travellers updated always. From travel disruptions and alerts to weather updates and information on the traveller’s departure gate, flight time changes and where to collect baggage – this app is a must-have!
4. Who are you going to call when there is an emergency?
If you have a mobile workforce, you must have 24/7/365 global travel emergency assistance. This one’s pretty important and pretty straightforward.
When you’re a Corporate Traveller customer, your travellers have access to local and experienced travel support no matter what time of day it is and where they’re located. There are no long hold times or complicated steps to access your bookings and our team understand how important it is to speak to someone in times of crisis. One click on our mobile app or a phone call and we’re there for you.
5. Business productivity drops without the right technology and tools
When you go it alone managing business travel, your company is missing out on all the amazing tools and technology that have been specially designed to help businesses just like yours. Think mobile apps that are always on, so you don’t have to be, online booking tools powered by AI that remember all your preferences for fast bookings, tools to help you track where your travellers are, alert them of any incidents and then reporting tools which show you just how much you're spending on travel. Oh yeah – now we’re talking!
6. You’re missing out on exclusive deals, corporate rates and fares
One of the coolest things about having a dedicated travel manager is that your business is the first to know when exclusive deals or special industry airfares are released. Plus, because Corporate Traveller is part of the global travel company, Flight Centre Travel Group, your business has easy access to a global network of airfares, rates, and ground transport options. We’ll also show you how to leverage your room night volume or flights to secure specially negotiated rates or fares for domestic or international travel.
7. Your payment processes are adding to your costs
One of the true advantages of booking with a specialist business travel provider is the advice they’ll give you about payment methods. If your staff are paying for their own travel and then being reimbursed or you’re using a few different credit cards to pay for travel – how much are you paying in credit card merchant fees each year? You would be surprised how much these fees actually cost your business.
Book through Corporate Traveller and your business has access to a line of credit as part of an invoice account. This removes the need to pay merchant fees and frees up your cash flow. Boom. A cash saver right there!
8. Without a travel policy in place you’re up a creek with no paddle
If you don’t have rules or processes in place for your company’s travel, your people will be left drowning in paperwork and emails and your budget easily blown. A travel policy puts a framework in place for what is permitted when it comes to who can travel, class of travel, hotel rates, how to pay for travel, who books travel, how much is permitted for meals and what your team does when there is a travel emergency. An easy-to-understand and succinct travel policy is one of the first things your business needs if you have even one person that travels