How to streamline the business travel booking process?

In every growing company where employees travel for business, there comes a time when organizing a business trip transforms from a relatively simple task into a logistically complex process. The growing number of business trips is essentially a tangle of hotel reservations, airline and train tickets, documents, invoices, and numerous employee inquiries about travel approval.

If you feel like you're losing control in this area, it's a sign you need a solid foundation to help you organize the chaos and eliminate hidden costs. In this article, we'll show you why it's worth addressing and offer simple ways to regain control of business travel and increase your team's satisfaction.

Why is the orderly organization of business trips important?

The lack of systematization of processes related to business travel negatively affects:

• Cost control - Without a structured process, it's difficult to track travel expenses in real time. This typically leads to budget overruns and makes it difficult to negotiate favourable rates with hotels or airlines. This situation also prevents taking steps to optimize business travel expenses.
• Efficiency and time saving - Your team spends a lot of time and energy searching for and comparing flight and hotel deals, as well as completing travel-related paperwork. This wastes countless hours each month that could be spent on other, more important tasks that impact the company's growth.
• Satisfaction and comfort of traveling employees - complex procedures and the need to spend private money on business trips lead to frustration, reduce the comfort of business trips, and may negatively impact efficiency.

The biggest challenges when booking business trips

As a company grows, spontaneous business travel arrangements become less effective. This reveals various problems. We've discussed the most common ones below.

○ Lack of a uniform process for delegation

Travelling employees book their transportation and accommodations via various websites. Invoices arrive from many different sources, and communication usually involves dozens of emails and phone calls. Not to mention situations where travel plans need to be urgently changed, which is often inconvenient and causes significant stress for employees. This lack of centralized process leads to chaos and loss of control.

○ Difficulties in controlling the business travel budget

Even if you have established spending limits for business travel, enforcing them is often problematic. Without real-time cost monitoring tools, you usually learn about budget overruns after the fact, i.e., during the travel settlement process.

○ Lots of formalities and time-consuming settlement of delegations

Collecting numerous paper invoices and receipts and completing expense claims is frustrating for traveling employees. Manually entering data into Excel, on the other hand, is a headache for the finance department. Manual processes are a huge waste of time and, worse still, they are also fraught with error.

○ Limited flexibility for traveling employees

Procedures or the imposition of specific, often inconvenient, flight, travel, or hotel connections significantly lower employee satisfaction. Modern business travel organizations should combine corporate savings with the flexibility of traveling teams.

Where to start to streamline your business travel booking process?

You don't have to launch a massive revolution right away. Introducing a few basic improvements should yield quick and noticeable results. Below, we briefly describe three basic actions you can implement almost immediately.

○ Create a transparent and simple travel policy

A business travel policy is a document that clearly and simply defines the rules related to company travel. It's worth starting by writing down the most important rules, which will answer the following basic questions:

1. What are the budget limits for accommodation and transportation?

In this section, specify:

• Hotels: What is the maximum cost per night in a given country? What hotel standard (e.g., 3 or 4 stars) is acceptable?
• Flights: Do employees always travel economy class? Is business class allowed on long-haul flights? It's worth clarifying the number of hours that will define a short-haul or long-haul flight.
• Other Transport: When can a traveling employee rent a car, and when should they use a train, taxi, or Uber?

2. What does the travel approval process look like?

At this point, define:

• What information should a travel request include (e.g., purpose, agenda) so that the approver can make a quick decision?
• How should an employee submit a travel request? How will the traveler be informed of approval to ensure the entire process is transparent?
• Who approves business trips? Is it your immediate supervisor or someone else within the company?

3. How are additional employee expenses during business trips settled?

At this point, write down:

• What additional costs will the company cover (per diems, meals, travel to the delegation destination )?
• How and by what date must an employee submit additional expenses for settlement?

4. How can an employee arrange visa and insurance formalities?

In this section, describe:

• Does the company work with a travel insurance partner? Who should an employee contact regarding this matter?
• Who at the company monitors and verifies current visa and health requirements for a specific travel destination? Does the company have a designated person to assist with visa applications, or do employees handle this independently? 
• Who can an employee contact in an unexpected crisis (e.g., lost luggage, theft, cancelled flight)? Who in the company provides travelling employees with the emergency numbers available in a specific country?
• How will you storage the documentation related to travel formalities?

Over time, you can further expand your travel policy and address other aspects of business travel that are important to your industry. Remember that clear policies eliminate uncertainty and greatly facilitate employee decision-making that aligns with company standards.

○ Designate a person responsible for organizing business trips

Centralizing responsibility for business travel is an important element that helps ensure logistical order. It's worth appointing a person within the company to oversee business travel. Even if it's only a part-time position, such as an office manager or assistant, it can significantly streamline the entire process. This person can negotiate rates, oversee document flow, and provide support for traveling employees. At this stage, you might also consider working with a travel agency. However, remember that communication based solely on emails and phone calls slows down the process, and a travel agent's availability is usually limited to office hours.

○ Build a database of hotels and airlines that your company chooses most often

If your employees regularly travel to the same business destinations, it's worth considering establishing relationships with a few reputable hotels. You could also establish long-term partnerships with airlines that have an extensive flight network and offer loyalty programs. This will allow you to negotiate significantly better prices and ensure a consistently high standard of service.

Automation of business travel processes

The above methods will certainly help you organize the basic chaos. However, it's worth remembering that as your company grows and the number of business trips increases, manual processes can become inefficient. This is where business travel management automation comes in, allowing you to maintain perfect order throughout the process, regardless of the annual volume of business trips. One such solution is the worktrips.com platform, which addresses all the challenges described above:

• Centralizes reservations – employees independently book flights, trains, hotels, and cars in one place according to their individual preferences, and the system automatically verifies compliance of each delegation with the travel policy.
• Automates budget control – you have full visibility into your expenses in real time and can generate detailed reports. Additionally, there's the option to automatically approve trips that fall within your company's established limits.
• It simplifies billing and reduces paperwork – no more collecting invoices and receipts. The worktrips.com platform provides digital document flow, allowing travellers to upload invoices directly into the system. Your company receives a single, consolidated invoice for all services, eliminating the hassle of employee reimbursement.
• Provides support – in case of unforeseen circumstances, employees can contact travel agents who are available 24/7/365 and always ready to provide support. Experienced WorkTrips specialists can also help choose the right insurance policy and mediate in visa applications.

You simply need an efficient business trip organization process

Streamlining your business travel booking process translates into real savings, significantly higher efficiency, and greater team satisfaction. Start by auditing your current business travel processes and talking to your employees. Then, you can move on to implementing simple rules and centralizing responsibilities, which will immediately yield visible results. When you feel you want to take your travel management to the next level, automation will be the next natural step. It will free up your travelling employees' time and allow them to focus on what matters most to the company: their business goals.

Photo by Bram Naus on Unsplash