There are 500 million individual business trips carried out per year in the US alone, with companies shelling out over $100 billion each year to fund them. Now that’s a whole lot of money spent on travel expenses, and if these expenses aren’t watched closely, they could leave you grappling with an inflated travel budget.
Employee overspending is another issue travel managers face, with overspending taking up to a third of business’ travel budgets. At least half of traveling employees don’t appraise their employers where they will be staying or the kind of flights they selected, and all these issues could leave you wondering why travel costs are getting so darn expensive.
So here are 5 strategies recommended CrewFacilities.com to help you keep employee travel costs down and make sure the trips result in a good ROI.
Systemize Your Travel Program. This ought to be the first thing you do if you haven’t done it already. Any efficient corporate travel program relies on automation as it allows a travel manager and traveling staff access to various processes all in one convenient location. With the booking, approval, expense and risk management processes in one location, you’ll save tons of time, resources, and manpower.
And speaking of risk management, an automated system makes managing risk a lot easier. For instance, automated alert systems will notify you when a passenger requests a trip to a flagged location.
Invest in Travel Management Software. This goes hand in hand with systematization. Travel-management software will grant you a variety of tools to streamline processes, gather analytics and improve travel policy compliance. A good platform should cater to the entire travel management process, from requesting a trip to filing expense reports. It has to integrate with other business processes for ease of use, and it should allow continual improvement. Additionally, an effective messaging system would allow traveling staff to keep in contact with the office. This is exactly what you get from the CrewFacts App when you hire CrewFacilities as your travel management company.
Take a More Active Role in Travel Management. When there’s a disconnect between senior management and the travel program managers, there’s bound to be misunderstandings. Apparently, only 27% of CFOs have an effective relationship with their travel managers. If you’re looking to tighten up your travel costs, you’ll have to dirty your hands, so to speak. Strong collaboration between senior managers and travel managers is the only way the company’s financial goals will be implemented. It could be through collaborative analysis of policy performance or gathering feedback from the traveling staff first hand. Or better still, hand over matters of travel management to a neutral party (a TMC like CrewFacilities.com).
Don’t Forget about the Millennials. They make up half of all business trips, and for the most part, millennials operate and travel differently from the older generations. Accounting for these differences and adjusting your policies to cater to them will go a long way in ensuring travel policy compliance. Millennial travelers are more likely to include leisure in their trips, and they’re more willing to pay for ancillaries like tips.
Update Your Travel Policy. Most of the factors affecting business travel are not static, so why should your policy be rigid? The best policies are always evolving, and with new technologies debuted often, it would be wise to implement these changes. This way, your travel program will be flexible, able to respond to market changes and capitalize on opportunities to reduce costs.
At CrewFacilities.com, we deliver a bouquet of travel management services that not only make travel programs affordable but also bring a host of other benefits, such as freeing your staff to focus on their core duties. Get in touch today and learn how we can be of help!
