This year, many organisations are striving to balance increasing travel requirements with decreasing budgets, surging travel costs and an increased requirement to meet corporate sustainability goals. Employee expectations and travel disruptions are also top concerns.
As trip frequency increases, implementing robust systems to manage these challenges will be essential. Let’s have a look at how you can streamline your corporate travel management processes to better control costs, boost efficiency and minimise disruptions.
Why effective travel management matters for organisations
There are plenty of benefits to business travel. From building stronger relationships with clients, suppliers and employees, to expanding knowledge and growing brand presence. Travelling for business can support growth and expansion, opening the door to new opportunities. But it does come with plenty of administrative tasks that need careful management. Controlling costs in a climate of rising prices, heightened employee expectations and sustainability goals, requires careful planning and budgeting.
The latest trends in corporate travel management
Enhanced use of technology
Corporate travel managers are becoming more open to using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and enhance traveller experience. Research from the GBTA found 75% are interested in using an AI-driven chatbot to automatically answer questions about their travel programmes. [1]
Data-driven decision-making
As technology is used to support more travel functions, from booking trips to managing expenses, corporate travel management teams are gaining access to valuable data on employee spending patterns and behaviours. This data can support so many areas, from designing travel policies to negotiating discounts and perks with suppliers.
Increasing employee expectations
As remote and hybrid working patterns continue to evolve since COVID, more employees are expecting flexible, personalised and luxury travel options. This not only includes first and business class flights and upmarket hotels, but ease of managing expenses and reimbursements as well.
Instead of wasting time logging expenses and generating reports, an American Express Business® Travel Account simplifies the planning and expense reporting process for your employees. That way, your teams can spend more time on higher value tasks and less time on admin.
The rise of ‘bleisure’
Employees are increasingly combining business trips with leisure time, taking the opportunity to explore new destinations while away from the office.
Sustainable travel
With climate and sustainably increasingly a hot topic on the news agenda, organisations and employees are becoming more aware of their environmental impact.
Corporate travel solutions for senior management
Developing comprehensive travel policies
A well-defined travel policy provides your employees with a set of guidelines and rules they can use when booking flights, accommodation and other travel-related expenses. It should include details such as daily budget limits, costs that will be reimbursed and the processes to follow when arranging trips and recording expenses.
Managing travel budgets
Given costs are a real challenge for most companies in the year ahead, demonstrating the value of business trips and ensuring travel budgets go further, is crucial. Develop a framework your teams can use to evaluate the merits of a trip before booking. The framework should consider the costs against the expected benefits and how they align to wider corporate goals.
American Express® Corporate Cards provide detailed expense reporting and real-time transaction tracking, making the reconciliation process much more straightforward. They also enable managers to set spending limits and controls that ensure closer compliance to travel policies, so that overspend is less likely.
Prioritising safety and security
How you ensure the safety and wellbeing of your employees when travelling for work should form an essential part of your travel policy, known as your duty of care. A comprehensive duty of care should include the processes you take to assess risks ahead of travel, any countries that are off-limits, the measures you take to mitigate risks and emergency response plans.
Encouraging compliance and training
Don’t rely on your employees seeking out your travel policy and guidelines. Instead, it’s so important to run regular training sessions to keep your employees informed about your travel protocols and processes. Your employees should also be regularly trained in your corporate travel policy and duty of care, to ensure they’re aware of the rules and what to do in an emergency.
As corporate travel continues to rise, teams are focussed on how to improve efficiency, rein in costs and support employee wellbeing and sustainability in the corporate travel management function.
This in part relies on introducing clear policies and processes and ensuring they’re communicated transparently right through the organisation. Embracing technology and automation will also go a long way to reducing the time spent on administrative tasks, such as bookings, travel updates and expense reporting.
American Express® Corporate Solutions can automate and improve the efficiency of many of these processes, making reporting easier and automatically identifying money-saving opportunities. To learn more, click here.
[1] Global Business Travel Association, Business Travel Industry Anticipates a Strong but Challenging 2024 According to Latest GBTA Poll, 2024