7 Ways to Save on Business Travel Spends!

Travelling for business is essential for organisations to get the job done. Businesses travel to sell their products or services and to network with industry peers. Business travel, thus, can be considered as an input cost towards running a business. Therefore, unrestrained expenditure on corporate travel may overweigh any benefits accrued from such an exercise.

Here are 7 ways that can help you save money on business travel:

1. Optimise the Travel Policy Conditions

A good way to control costs is to develop a set of guidelines related to travel expenditure and encourage compliance by employees. The guidelines are set keeping in mind the travel frequency demands and other travel-related details such as allotted spends-per-person based on their designation or even city-wise expenditure structure. It is also necessary to keep a balance between ensuring traveller’s convenience and not spreading the company budget too thin.

2. Check Competitive Pricing Before Booking

Always compare prices before booking hotels and flights for the prices may vary with different vendors across locations in a city and airlines, respectively. You can also take the services of an online travel platform which generally shows a wide range of listing of hotels and flights.

3. Use an Online Travel Booking Platform for Corporates

You can enlist the services of an online portal for travel management, catering exclusively to corporates. These platforms offer flights and hotel bookings at discounted rates and other avenues to save money:

1. Reportage: Corporate travel platforms publish extensive reports on your company's travel expenditure. The report then serves as a good way to analyse where the spending is overshooting the budget or how can they tighten/improve their policies to check the expenditure.
2. Features: They also have deep technology expertise and are generally available across platforms (Android, iOS and desktop). They can also embed restrictions to ensure your employees book in compliance with company policies from the start, and receive on-the-go approvals.

4. Join Corporate Loyalty Programs

Several travel platforms provide loyalty programs where you get to earn rewards or benefits on your travel expenditure. While this is not exactly a way to save money, this is a way in which you can earn monetary benefits on your expenditure.

5. Negotiate Deals with Frequently Used Suppliers

As a company, you can also negotiate deals with more frequently visited hotel chains or more oft-booked airline to get corporate discounts, especially for you.

6.  Encourage Employees to Travel Economically

This is not to say that your employees cannot book a business class ticket; but, when they can, they should book economy. Similarly, when booking a hotel, either they should have the flexibility of choosing a hotel of their preference within the set limit or the quality of the hotel as mapped to their hierarchy.

While employees get reimbursement on their travel expenditure based on their employee accessibility level and do not have a vested interest in actively saving on company spends, involving them in reaping the benefits of these savings will encourage them to save more.

7. Purchase in Advance

Tickets are cheaper when booked 15 or more days in advance, as compared to when such trips are booked closer to the date of travel. Planning ahead is the key here. There are many business trips about which the involved parties know well in time, or is already scheduled to happen during a particular month or time every year. Purchasing in advance allows companies to save on the extra money which they may have to shell out when tickets are bought in a hurry.

Lastly, if there are any business travel plans which can be avoided by conducting them through online channels of communication, that also contributes towards saving on the allotted travel budget.

With the logistics changing for how businesses work and transact in the current scenario, we are still to see how the future of work will evolve, and along with it, the future of business travel. Safety has already emerged as one of the key factors that every traveller would like to be assured about. In the meantime, the above-mentioned ways will ensure that you can manage your travel budget and also save on the expenditure.

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