Employees these days travel to various business travel destinations for customer acquisition, market expansion, and revenue generation purposes. Employers make business trips successful by boosting business travel experience and safety.
Many companies and startups find it challenging to meet business travel requirements and run business travel programs. They save time and cost by outsourcing the complex business process to a travel management company.
Corporate travel management companies meet the business travel needs of customers by providing different services and solutions. They help employees plan business trips, make travel arrangements, and mitigate business travel risks.
Also, they facilitate travel management automation by providing useful tools like travel management software, expense management software, and fleet tracking solutions. However, the services and solutions provided by individual travel management companies vary.
You should focus on using a company that meets your company’s short-term and long-term business travel requirements. At the same time, you must consider multiple factors to partner with the right travel management company.
11 Things You Must Consider to Choose the Right Travel Management Company
- Industry Expertise
While outsourcing corporate travel management, you must focus on using a company with adequate experience and expertise. The experience will help you use a travel management company that understands business travel requirements, regulations, and challenges deeply.
At the same time, the expertise will make the company meet the expectations and needs of business travelers by adopting the hottest trends. It is always important to prioritize and shortlist companies that have planned and managed multi-destination business trips successfully.
- Policy Implementation and Enforcement
Employees can reduce costs by complying with preset travel and expense (T&E) policies while booking business trips. Likewise, they can mitigate travel risks by following the rules and guidelines set by your organization.
Hence, your business needs a travel management company that prevents T&E policy violations. Also, you should prioritize companies that help you refine T&E rules by sharing actionable ideas and insights based on real-time data and trends.
- Pre-Trip Assistance
Your company may make new employees engage in business travel. It must help first-time business travelers to procure and update essential travel documents like passports, visas, national IDs, international driving licenses, and travel insurance.
Also, you should make it easier for employees to make travel checklists and travel itineraries according to the business travel destination. Hence, you should use a travel management company that helps employees travel for work by providing the required pre-trip assistance.
- Personalization
Personalization is one of the important trends in business travel. While making business travel arrangements, each employee wants to book his choice of travel products. Also, they love to get personalized recommendations based on travel choices and booking histories.
Your company can satisfy and motivate employees using a travel management company that provides access to an extensive and diverse travel inventory. At the same time, you need to ensure that the company considers the employee’s preferences while choosing and booking business travel products.
- Travel Risk Management
Employees can remain stress-free before business trips when they access real-time information like flight delays and flight cancellations. Likewise, they can stay safe by accessing the latest travel guidelines and regulations.
It becomes easier for work travelers to get the required support and assistance when your business uses a travel management company that 24/7 support. However, you need to ensure that each employee can contact the customer support team using his preferred communication channel.
Also, you should check the average time required by the team to respond to the employee’s time. You must help employees mitigate any travel risks by ensuring that they can get the required assistance in minutes.
- Duty of Care
Your company must meet its duty of care obligations by ensuring the safety and security of each work traveler. It becomes easier for you to meet this legal obligation using a travel management company with robust duty of care resources.
You should prioritize companies that provide emergency assistance to employees across destinations. Also, you must check if the company keeps international work travelers safe and stress-free by partnering with a global health and security risk management firm.
- Travel Expense Management
While outsourcing business travel management, you must focus extensively on streamlining travel expense reporting. Most travel management companies streamline expense management by submitting expense reports.
But you should consider companies that provide expense management software. The software will help your company unify the travel and expense data of employees. In addition to getting real-time spend visibility, your finance team can use the software to speed up reimbursements, conduct expense audits, and generate custom reports.
- Travel Data Management
The travel management company will book business trips for your employees. Hence, it will access the personal and sensitive information of employees. You should check the measures taken by the company to prevent identity theft and financial fraud by optimizing data security.
It is always advisable to choose a company that stores, accesses, and shares T&E data in encrypted format. At the same time, you should prioritize companies that share actionable insights by analyzing the data using sophisticated data analytics.
- Automation
Automation helps your organization increase the ROI of business travel consistently. In addition to reducing human resource costs, special-purpose tech tools help your employees save time and remain stress-free.
Travel management companies facilitate travel management automation by providing useful software like corporate booking tools, expense management solutions, and fleet tracking solutions. However, you should prefer companies that facilitate end-to-end automation by providing integrated travel and expense management software.
- Cost Saving
A travel management company will help you reduce average business trip costs in several ways. For instance, it will save money by booking flights, accommodations, car rentals, and other business travel products at lower than market rates.
Also, the company will control costs by booking flexible flight tickets, avoiding last-minute bookings, and incentivizing employees to save. Hence, you should evaluate and compare the cost-saving measures and options used by the shortlisted companies.
- Pricing Model
Travel management companies adopt various pricing models or fee structures. Some companies adopt subscription models that require customers to pay monthly/annual fees. At the same time, others allow customers to pay per business trip or number of transactions. Your company should choose a company that supports a transparent and cost-effective pricing model.
Conclusion
The right travel management company will help your organization increase the ROI of business travel in several ways. In addition to boosting business travel experience and safety, the company will create opportunities to control business travel costs.
But you should prioritize companies that help you streamline and automate business travel management simultaneously. In addition to considering the services provided by the company, you should evaluate travel management, expense management, and fleet management solutions provided by it.