Regardless of whether you’re coordinating corporate business travel for the first occasion, or you’ve managed fifty such trips; keep reading to learn about business travel varieties, challenges you’ll encounter, considerations to keep in mind, and the reasons why using corporate travel management specialists like DW Travel can prove significantly easier, and more convenient.
Employee business trips offer excellent opportunities for staff to engage with colleagues and clients, and secure important business deals; but given that the reservation process includes so many interconnected elements, it can become challenging to coordinate – particularly when you add emergency visas, disrupted flights, and concealed costs.
What is corporate travel?
As anticipated, corporate travel designates employees within an organization traveling for professional activities; this may include client visits, deal closings, or conference networking.
Throughout the process, you’ll need organizing not just flights, hotels, and transfers, but guaranteeing that all required documentation needed for country entry is arranged, plus preparing employees for their trips.
Why use a business travel management company?
In reality, there’s substantial coverage required when arranging corporate travel, which explains why numerous companies utilize services like DW Travel, to handle the challenging work for them!
Some of the benefits of using a business travel management company include:
● 24/7 help: Hopefully, your employees’ time abroad will run smoothly, but there’s always a chance of something unexpected happening! Whether it’s a cancelled flight, or a quickly changing political situation that means employees need to leave, we’re only a phone call away. We’ll always be there for you and your colleagues, and our partnership with a dedicated risk management company means your employees will always be safe.
● Reduction of errors: With so many moving parts involved in booking corporate travel, it’s easy for something to be missed. However, working with a professional corporate travel management company like DW Travel means that errors will be minimised. Simply let us know your requirements, and we’ll take care of the rest!
● Help set a company travel policy: One of the main headaches of keeping corporate travel internal, is the need to set up a standardised policy. By using a management system, that’s automatically done for you, with one clear procedure for everyone in your company to follow.
● Manual work is reduced: Forget researching hotels closest to your chosen venue, working out pick-up times for transport, and confirming flight codes – the manual admin of corporate travel will be taken away from you with a corporate travel management company; freeing up your time to focus on other tasks.
● Tracking approvals process: With everything done online through one system, both you and your employees will easily be able to see where you’re at with approvals, and what needs chasing.
● Risk reduction: There are many risks to booking overseas travel at work, and it’s easy to overlook something. Partner with DW Travel, and we’ll not only ensure that all the visas and legal paperwork are taken care of for travel, but that risk assessments are conducted for the destination employees are visiting, alongside a review of your duty of care obligations, and so much more.
● Cost saving: We partner with the best in the business, which means that we’re able to enjoy significant savings on flights, accommodation, and more, which we pass on to you.
The different types of corporate business travel
Many different scenarios necessitate booking employee business travel, with several highlighted in the following section.
Office transfers
With international offices, you’ll probably have employees relocating – whether that means permanent relocation to new countries, or sabbaticals, if, for example, they’re required for specific projects, or assisting with new office launches.
Office transfers usually constitute more challenging corporate travel aspects, since you’ll need researching – and securing – the appropriate visas and documentation to grant your employee(s) legal work rights in the country; plus providing settlement support, like finding accommodation.
Bleisure travel
For numerous employees, the ability to blend corporate business travel with leisure proves invaluable, since it provides them some free time to explore new destinations – generating the term ‘bleisure’. This proves valuable for the organization too, since it allows your employees to relax and unwind during this time, before returning to work feeling refreshed.
When arranging bleisure travel, you’ll probably pay for return transportation and accommodation required for the business trip nights, with the employee covering the remaining hotel, but this completely depends on your organization’s policy.
Internal travel
Organizations with offices globally will probably require employees traveling to other offices, for colleague meetings – whether that involves conducting face-to-face sessions, or discovering new processes or culture that the alternate office has introduced, or experienced successes with.
Along similar lines, company retreats can constitute another reason for international travel, permitting everyone to gather in one venue, as they dedicate a few days engaging in varied activities, becoming better acquainted with each other.
Conferences and events
Alternatively, employees might require traveling to attend conferences for expanding their knowledge, or engaging in networking events to grow their contact network. Likewise, trade fairs can represent essential corporate travel elements, granting employees invaluable direct contact with potential buyers, to grow revenue for the organization.
Client meetings
Your employee may be traveling for external reasons, like meeting clients. Several nations and cultures around the globe, such as Japan and other Asian regions, truly value in-person meetings, rendering them an invaluable element of creating and maintaining relationships, or closing business deals.
How to improve your corporate travel
Having learned the factors you’ll need to consider when arranging corporate travel, we’ve presented a few additional actions you can implement (or we can assist with), that will genuinely help to enhance your employee(s) overseas experience, and ensure they enjoy wonderful trips.
Research your destination
After booking the accommodation, and before employees depart, performing research into their destination can help them feel substantially more prepared. Investigate weather conditions, the destination’s safety (consider crime statistics, and the political climate), along with the closest public transport station, and healthcare options should they become sick. Essentially, you’ll want comprehensive coverage should anything go wrong!
Though, it’s not all pessimistic, as there will be numerous enjoyable things to research as well, like restaurants and bars close to the hotel, along with top attractions, and activities during their downtime.
Give employees an itinerary
After you’ve completed all that research, and finalized any required bookings, create itineraries that outline everything on a day-by-day basis, and give travelers both a physical version, and a digital copy, in case they misplace the printed document.
In your itinerary you’ll want to cover:
● Transfer to the airport: This includes pick-up times, and where they’ll be picked up from.
● Flight times: This includes the take-off time, any layovers, and relevant flight code(s).
● Transfer on arrival at their destination: Where they’ll be met, the number plate of the car, and the driver’s name and contact details, if you have them to hand.
● Accommodation: This includes the address, check in/out times, contact details, whether or not breakfast is served (and timings), and details of any extra amenities they have.
● Things to do: For whatever reason your employee(s) may be travelling, you may need to let them know what time they need to be at a venue, meeting times, travel times, where and when dinner has been booked, etc.
● Free time options: Adding in your research on the top things to do, lunch or restaurant spots, and more, will be a nice touch.
● Emergency contact details: Any names, phone numbers, and email addresses of people either in your office, and who they’re meeting will be really handy if timings are late, or if employees need something last minute when they’re out there.
Brief employees before they fly
For ensuring complete preparation, we’d recommend arranging a conversation with employee(s) so you can review them on travel arrangements, and allow them to ask you any questions they might have. Since some countries need to see particular documents upon arrival, this can be the ideal opportunity to remind employees what documentation they require readily available when they travel, to ensure smooth experiences.
The challenges of booking corporate travel yourself
Given so many interconnected elements involved in booking business travel, there are challenges you’ll likely encounter during the process. Nevertheless, being prepared, and possessing process understanding can help minimize these challenges.
Regular travel updates
Flight schedules might change, there could be venue switches, or political conditions in nations can be rapidly evolving; and as the coordinator of booking corporate travel, it’ll be your responsibility to stay current on all information, and deliver regular travel updates to all parties, which can prove extremely time-consuming; and might result in plans being altered last minute.
Not having a clear process
When there’s no defined process established, then it can rapidly devolve into chaos! Requesting employees to locate accommodation could mean they select something beyond budget, or don’t respond to you promptly, which leaves everything to be arranged at the last minute.
Similarly, without a dedicated booking platform for employees to submit their requests on, then you might be receiving messages, emails, and Slack communications from different employees, which can make it significantly easier to overlook something.
If not already in place, guarantee you have a truly clear booking process established that you – or anyone joining your team – can readily follow by reading the instructions. Share this plan with employees so they understand who to approach, and how to request travel when required, to help make the process substantially easier for you.
Getting approval
You’ll not just need obtaining sign off from finance and HR on budgets, but you’ll also require confirmation from employees traveling that they’re satisfied with itineraries, and verifying if they have any questions.
While in certain cases, that may be straightforward; in alternative situations, you might encounter pushback – something that can be handled by a business travel management company, if they assume it on your behalf.
Managing costs
Regarding booking your corporate travel, you’ll have budgets in place that will require including everything – from flights and accommodation, all the way to transport and food.
Even a thoroughly planned budget can be challenging to manage – particularly if employees wish to select their own hotels, or a last minute booking modification won’t provide you a refund. Again, it’ll be your responsibility to ensure you maintain that budget, whilst planning all eventualities.
Things to consider when booking corporate travel
Having moved past the challenges, there are numerous interconnected elements you’ll need to consider when booking corporate travel, to ensure everything proceeds smoothly – and this explains why many organizations opt for corporate travel agencies like ourselves, to eliminate the headache from it.
Obtain all necessary information
For ensuring the trip runs smoothly, you’ll need verifying employees’ passports remain current, and all necessary international visas have been obtained, to allow them to enter the country they’ll be visiting.
You’ll also want collecting information like emergency contact details, dietary preferences, so you can meet their requirements while they’re abroad; and their residential address, so you can organize the necessary pick-up/drop off transfers, along with planning the most effective route, when there are multiple people traveling together.
Book accommodation and flights in advance
For obtaining the best deals, booking in advance usually proves the easiest option – though that’s not consistently possible with corporate travel, with some arrangements only confirmed at the last minute.
For booking accommodation, cost won’t be the sole consideration. Proximity to the venue will be critical, along with access to public transport, and the safety of the area.
You’ll also want investigating amenities like breakfast, and arranging an alternative if that’s not available; plus conference rooms (if required), and a gym, spa, and swimming pool, which can be a pleasant added feature for employees staying for several nights.
Before confirming, ensure you review the feedback, filtering them specifically to corporate travellers where possible, to gain the most accurate overview of what the hotel actually offers.
For more information about how we can help you with your corporate travel, please get in touch with us today; or for more travel tips, head on over to our blog.