Corporate Online Traveller

Who Can Benefit From Booking Corporate Travel Online?

Whether you are a multi-national corporation, or a neighbourhood machine shop. You or your

If your staff travel regularly anywhere, you need to have control of that travel.

employees may at some stage be required to travel. It might be a simple trip to see a customer in a nearby city or a complex international journey.

If these trips happen on more than a one-off basis, then you will have found that travel can become an appreciable cost to the business.

So, how do you manage the minefield of travel to ensure that you are getting the best return for your travel spend?

The management of corporate travel is a complex business and goes beyond just jumping on the net and choosing the cheapest fare on the day. In a perfect world this would be an acceptable method of letting our corporate travellers make their own arrangements for simple point to point trips. They would of course feel empowered by being able to control their own arrangements, which of course is a positive thing.

But, wait a minute, we know the world isn’t perfect.

Is the fare type chosen really the best option?

We know that meetings get cancelled, postponed or run over time. Did your corporate traveller read the rules of the “great deal” they booked and see that no changes were allowed? Oops! The fare is lost and a new one needs to be paid for. Perhaps a more flexible fare would have been a better choice.

Travellers’ Company Loyalty

Ensuring your travellers stick to company approved suppliers means better buying power with those suppliers as well as better safety.

Did your traveller truly choose the cheapest fare, or was it the cheapest on the airline with which they have a Frequent Flier membership? Where two airlines offer flights at a similar time, it is common for the traveller to choose the one with which they can accrue points on, or offers free drinks. The difference in fare may be slight, or not so slight. This kind of pattern will soon add up and generate significant lost savings.

Supplier Loyalty.

The traveller may not be aware of deals that the company has taken time to negotiate with airlines, hotels or rental car companies. The effect will be two fold. Firstly the traveller will not benefit from the negotiated fares/rates. Secondly the non-use of these fares/rates may make it difficult for the company to renegotiate them in the future.

Travel Policy

These are but a few examples to illustrate the importance of having a Travel Policy. A Travel Policys complexity will often reflect the complexity and size of the company it applies to. It is designed to guide employees through the business travel process to control travel spend as well as protect the traveller. Please go to our Travel Policy section to learn more.

Applying Travel Policy.

Once a Travel Policy has been formulated, it has to then be used to guide the behaviours of our travelling employees. It can be emailed to all staff with an indication that all future travel arrangements must be made in accordance with the policy and then sit back and relax. Of course we will find that behaviours may change for a short time, but the policy will soon be forgotten and travellers will revert back to old habits.

What is needed is an environment where a traveller can feel empowered to make their own travel choices but at the same time be guided through the process by the travel policy.

This is where the Corporate Booking Tool (CBT ) comes into the picture. The Corporate Booking Tool (CBT) will ensure a uniform adherence to policy whilst allowing the traveller or travel booker the ability to make instant choices from live content. Please see our Corporate Booking Tool (CBT) section for a fuller explanation.