Best Practices for Effective Corporate Travel Planning and Budgeting

Working professionals these days travel to various destinations for work purposes. Some of them feel excited while traveling for work, while others find business travel stressful. The travel-related stress often makes it difficult for employees to accomplish predefined business travel goals.

Frequent work travelers remain relaxed and active during business trips focusing extensively on corporate travel planning. They track the people to meet, things to do, and places to visit during the work trip by preparing elaborate business travel itineraries.

Also, they remain stress-free by booking the right business travel products and services. At the same time, work travelers focus extensively on business travel budgeting to ensure organizational policy compliance and avoid non-reimbursable travel expenses.

While streamlining corporate travel management, companies and startups explore ways to simplify corporate travel planning and budgeting. They simplify these interrelated activities in multiple ways – deploying an in-house travel manager, working with a travel management company, and implementing travel management software.

Also, they adopt a slew of best practices to make it easier for every employee to plan and budget business trips. Here are several corporate travel planning and budgeting best practices your organization should adopt to streamline corporate travel management.

8 Best Practices to Simplify Corporate Travel Planning and Budgeting

1. Set Travel and Expense Policies

Employees can plan business and budget business trips easily when they know what to book and what to avoid. You can help employees incur only reimbursable travel expenses by setting travel and expense policies.

Employees can refer to well-defined policies to choose the right travel products and make realistic travel budgets. However, your policy must consider incidental and miscellaneous travel expenses along with essential business travel expenses like transportation, accommodation, food, and beverages.

2. Share Business Travel Itinerary Templates

A detailed business travel itinerary helps employees plan business trips by keeping important information related to the business trips accessible. Employees can refer to the itinerary to know whom to meet, where to meet, and when to meet a client or partner. Also, the itinerary will keep them stress-free by keeping crucial travel information and documents handy before and during the business trip.

You can make it easier for employees to plan business trips by sharing travel itinerary templates. The templates will make it easier for employees to schedule tasks and book the appropriate business travel products. However, you must instruct employees to carry both soft and hard copies of the travel itinerary.

3. Provide Choices and Options

Travel choices made by work travelers differ. For instance, some business travelers remain stress-free by booking direct flights instead of connecting flights. Likewise, some employees opt for homestays as an affordable alternative to hotels.

You can simplify corporate travel planning by enabling employees to book their choice of travel products like flights, accommodations, and car rentals. In addition to providing access to extensive travel inventories, your organizational policies must support self-booking.

4. Consider Options to Curtail Travel Costs

Along with allowing employees to choose, your policies must encourage them to control business travel costs. For instance, they must emphasize early business travel booking and leveraging the best deals. Likewise, your policies should encourage employees to control costs by using public transportation instead of cabs and taxis.

The cost-saving measures will help your employee adhere to the business travel budget. Also, they can spend more money on essential travel products. However, you must enable them to keep the travel budget flexible to accommodate last-minute changes and manage emerging travel risks.

5. Provide Relevant Information and Support

Employees find it challenging to make last-minute changes to business travel plans. For instance, they have to put in extra time and effort to cancel bookings and complete rebooking. Also, employees need both information and assistance to manage these changes.

Your policies must create opportunities for employees to get the required information or assistance by interacting with a travel expert. Many companies these days provide real-time information and support to work travelers by partnering with a travel management company or implementing a travel management solution.

6. Leverage Travel and Expense Data

Your policies can make it easier for employees to make business travel budgets by setting expenditure benchmarks. Employees can keep in mind the benchmark to estimate the business travel costs realistically. But you must consider both industry trends and employees’ preferences while setting the expenditure benchmarks.

It is always important to consider and analyze the historical travel and expense data to decide the parameters for setting realistic benchmarks. Also, you need to consider external factors like seasonality that impact average business trip costs directly while setting expenditure benchmarks.

7. Adopt Technologies

Your policies must consider automation as one of the corporate travel planning and budgeting best practices. There are many online tools and solutions that help employees plan business trips and make travel budgets without putting in extra time and effort.

For instance, a travel management solution will help employees estimate business travel costs in minutes according to the travel destination. Likewise, employees can use travel management software to compare and book travel products according to their preferences and organizational policies.

8. Keep Refining Travel Planning and Budgeting

There are many factors that impact the corporate travel planning and budgeting process. For instance, global inflation increases the budget by escalating the average business trip costs. Likewise, you can simplify corporate travel planning by making changes to organizational travel policies.

Hence, you must request employees to evaluate their travel experiences and suggest areas of improvement after business trips. The real-time information shared by your employees will help you refine and simplify business travel planning regularly.

Conclusion

Your organization can help employees achieve business travel goals by simplifying corporate travel planning and budgeting. You can simplify these interrelated activities by adopting several best practices. But it is always important to decide the right way to help employees plan and budget business trips.

You should remember that many travel management companies have launched feature-rich travel management software. Your employees can use the software to make realistic business travel budgets by estimating the normal cost of a business trip. At the same time, they can interact with travel experts to make the right travel choices without violating organizational policies or breaking preset budgets.