How to Manage Your Company’s Corporate Travel Program

In smaller businesses, travel management may (and often does) land with someone who is juggling many other responsibilities. Even if corporate travel was not in your purview before, your company is now counting on you to meet the challenge. This guide is here to help.

Developing a strategy and selecting the right system are key steps, so that you can answer the questions about bookings and policy, contend with cancellations and other disruptions, control costs and keep an eye on budgets, and ensure the safety of travelers on the road.

To help you and your company get up to speed, this blog will explore:

• Factors that can complicate travel management, such as cost, disruption, and weak spend visibility.

• Guidelines for developing a straightforward travel policy that people will follow.

• Capabilities to look for in a travel booking tool.

• How integrating travel and expense tools simplifies compliance, enables cost control, and streamlines work—both for you and your travelers.

If You’re Managing Travel, We’re Making It Easier

Whether new to the job or travel management has been added to your duties, learn practical tips for handling the role and making the system work better.

Get the guide

Why Does Corporate Travel Management Quickly Become Complicated?

Managing travel isn’t easy, including for seasoned travel managers, because even a well-established system is continually facing disruption. From weather-canceled flights to geopolitical and economic tensions that make prices uncertain and put travelers at risk, the larger travel ecosystem is constantly shifting.

Here are several challenges any manager faces:

• Focusing on the larger picture is often interrupted by trip requests and hunting for approvals, receipts, and other details.

• Spending comes from multiple sources, inadequate data hinders tracking, and fake receipts and padded expenses add to the difficulty.

• Storms, strikes, and other external problems complicate the responsibility of keeping travelers safe—and you might not know where they are in the first place due to weak systems and processes.

It’s a job with a full plate. Responsibilities including setting and enforcing policies, formalizing a booking system, supporting travelers with questions and complaints, managing risk and vendors, and tracking and reporting spending. Let’s consider three steps a new-t0-travel manager can take to bring structure to your system and be proactive instead of reactive—without sacrificing their own wellbeing.

How Do You Build a Travel Policy?

You cannot set travel policies without knowing what you’re trying to accomplish or manage for the business. Start by determining who travels at your organization, how often, where they go, and what types of trips are most important, such as sales visits vs. industry conferences. Then work with company leaders to clarify their top metrics for evaluating travel program success. Is it cost control? Productivity? Keeping employees safe?

Tips for Creating Your Travel Policy

Once your parameters are clear, you can start writing your travel policy. You don’t have to start from scratch, as you can use this free template, but here are some guidelines:

• Keep it short and simple to start, outlining how employees should book trips, setting spending limits for common purchases, and specifying when approvals are needed.

• Recognize that a policy won’t eliminate exceptions but will make them easier to resolve.

• Focus on how you travel today vs. trying to cover every future possibility.

Why You Need to Determine How Employes Can Book Trips

At businesses without a travel program or those just getting started, travelers often can book trips via whatever channels they prefer, making flexibility high but control low. The downsides become apparent as travel increases, with supplier discounts missed and an inability to manage costs or support your travelers when trips change. Businesses that move to a centralized system with a single booking tool can curtail some of the issues.

Tips for Picking a Booking Tool

Companies can adopt a single booking tool or consider a hybrid approach, which offers a tool while also retaining the option of going outside it. Here are some things to look for in a solution.

• Search for a platform that lets employees book directly with suppliers and also captures transaction data, routing it to your expense management solution.

• Seek tools that deliver diverse travel options and guide travelers to compliant choices right upfront.

• Recognizing that online booking tools mean you must pick a travel management company (TMC), you’ll need to assess whether you’ll require around-the-clock support or a lighter-touch support option.

Why It’s Important to Bring Travel and Expense Together

The travails of business travel can continue long after the trip is over. Expenses appear weeks later, and booking details and credit card charges may not match. Both travel managers and finance staff labor to resolve the issues, and both spending visibility and budget forecasting suffer. The culprit is often the disconnect between your travel management and expense management systems and processes.

Advantages of Connecting Travel and Expense Tools

When bookings, credit card feeds, and expenses are part of connected system, efficiencies and clarity grow as the rework of manual and disconnected processes is minimized.

• Details from travel bookings flow directly into expense reports and receipts are managed automatically instead of manually.

• Charges are correctly matched to trips and exceptions are caught early, reducing mistakes and speeding reimbursements.

• Spend visibility improves and compliance increases, while business leaders can readily access timely reports.

If You’re Managing Travel, We’re Making It Easier

Whether new to the job or travel management has been added to your duties, learn practical tips for handling the role and making the system work better.

Get the guide

Ensuring Duty of Care

The steps you’ve heard about zero in on processes, system, structure, and strategy. They’re critical but at the center of them all are your travelers, the fellow employees you and your company have a duty to keep safe and well. It’s essential to keep them at the forefront of your decisions. Failing to keep your valued co-workers safe and secure can damage productivity, retention, and the reputation of the business.

Adopting an automated travel system and pairing it with an expense solution can help you fulfill your duty of care responsibilities while providing structure and ensuring compliance and cost control. Learn more about duty of care.

Preparing for Growth

When building the foundation for modern travel management, it’s also important to look forward and select a system that can scale as your business grows and travel expands. Because if your system cannot handle the increased complexity that comes with growth, you—now a more experienced manager­—may be unprepared, forced to repeat steps in order to build a new foundation. Learn more about scaling your travel program.

FAQs: How Non-Travel Managers Can Start Managing Corporate Travel 

Q: What Makes Travel Management Challenging?

A: Travel managers must balance bookings, approvals, costs, disruptions, compliance, spend visibility, and traveler safety—often with limited systems and incomplete data.

Q: How Should a Company Develop a Travel Policy?

A: Start by identifying who travels, where they go, how often, and why. Then align the policy with business priorities, keep it simple and easy to follow, define booking and spending guidelines, and allow for exceptions.

Q: Why Centralize Travel Bookings?

A: A centralized or hybrid booking approach can improve cost control, capture travel data, support compliance, and help businesses access supplier discounts.

Q: What Should Companies Look for in a Booking Tool?

A: Seek tools that offer broad travel options, guide employees toward compliant choices, capture booking data, and integrate with expense management. Also consider the level of support your business needs from its travel management company (TMC).

Q: Why Connect Travel and Expense Management?

A: Travel and expense integration can automatically transfer booking details, match charges to trips, catch exceptions earlier, speed reimbursements, reduce manual work, and improve visibility.

Q: How Can Integrated Travel & Expense Support Traveler Safety and Business Growth?

A: Automated, connected systems can improve duty of care and compliance while providing scalable processes and visibility as travel programs become more complex.