Especially in larger companies, travel management is indispensable: it ensures smooth organisation, monitors costs and budget and ultimately, through good planning, ensures the well-being of the traveller.
The focus should be on the satisfaction of the employee who is travelling. Travel management has several options at its disposal that can make a trip more pleasant for the employee:
- Discovering new places
- Travelling in Business Class or First Class
- Staying in a hotel with lots of amenities
- Extending the business trip to include a private holiday
- Having more autonomy when making bookings
It is not always easy for Travel Management to reconcile employee requests with the budget limits set by the company. With a few tricks, however, it is possible to meet employees’ needs.
Exploit the advantages offered by the Internet
Whether it's a desktop or our Internet-enabled smartphone with its many useful apps, digital technologies can significantly improve travel management and travel planning – and meet the needs of employees abroad.
As a result, online booking portals have become more and more comprehensive and usually contain interesting reviews and opinions from other business travellers. These reviews often provide crucial information and are very useful for evaluating local accommodation or restaurants – without experiencing them yourself.
However, one should not be influenced too much by negative reviews, but always judge them using common sense in their respective context.
In addition, there are apps that give you real-time access to information about your flight, check-in, as well as hotels and transfers, so you can always stay well informed about changes to your itinerary.
Talk more with your colleagues
Effective communication between the company and the travelling employees facilitates and improves travel management. To do this, however, travel management and the employee must communicate with each other. Online questionnaires or emails are not always the most effective way of obtaining the latest information about travel. Personal conversations or feedback rounds are better – especially with frequent flyers. As real experts in business travel, you are able to provide travel management with insider knowledge. In addition, you will feel listened to and much more involved. This increases your willingness to participate in optimising travel management.
Build some leisure travel into the travel guidelines
Give your employees the opportunity to extend their trip in order to enjoy some free time. This increases satisfaction immensely and can also have a positive effect on travel costs. It’s a win-win situation for both parties, provided that everything is carefully arranged.
Every aspect of this type of travel must be included in the guidelines – especially the costs to be borne by the company and the additional costs incurred. This will avoid misunderstandings from the outset.
For example, some company guidelines allow the employee to take a day out of the office after a long flight, especially if it is a night flight. This is because a tired and exhausted employee cannot work satisfactorily – so a day off is an advantage for both parties too.
