)
Business travel is back! The 2008 financial crisis left companies short on cash, and the industry was slow to rebound. Once the industry finally stabilized, the pandemic hit and brought all travel to a screeching halt...literally!
But the tide has turned, and companies are sending staff out on the road again. And that means that more and more team members are coming to grips with the difficult travel booking process.
Because one thing hasn't changed: it’s still a pain to book trips. At least, it is for companies doing things the classic way. If you're asking staff to navigate a complex travel policy, find budget-appropriate flights and accommodation, book it all themselves (with their own money or the company card), and then provide valid proofs of purchase when they get back...you're stuck in the past.
Luckily, all you need to do to catch up is use a handy tool (or two). Modern technology is so much better at these manual tasks than we humans are.
These are the best tools to help you automate, centralise, and manage travel bookings for your company.
More travel management tips, tools and strategy:
Business travel booking tools
For most of your team, issues with travel start with the booking process. They know where they’re going and for how long, but they don’t necessarily know how to book the big trip.
Which gives you a few options:
You have a company travel buyer, or a member of the administration or finance teams make the booking; or
You let them book the trip, but with very clear travel policies and instructions.
We think the second option is best. Nearly half of business travellers want the opportunity to book for themselves.
But you don’t want to have to hold their hands throughout, and you absolutely need to keep clear records of all travel.
Here are a few good options to make the corporate travel booking more palatable.
1. TravelPerk
)
Booking business travel can be a significant challenge for staff. They bounce around from site to site, trying to find the most convenient and comfortable flights and accommodations to fit within company spending limits.
Most of the time, we’re happy to have such a huge range of options. But too much choice becomes counterproductive, and you end up wasting time and becoming frustrated.
TravelPerk tackles this challenge by putting the world’s largest travel inventory in one place. Just like the sites you use in your personal life, TravelPerk brings different airlines, hotels, trains and more into its dashboard and mobile app, so your team only needs to visit one platform.
And it gets much more interesting for finance teams. If your whole company books travel in one place, then tracking bookings and producing reports becomes incredibly simple.
Unlike the sites you use in your private life, TravelPerk is built for businesses. So they know what records you need to keep. And you’ll be able to easily see who booked which trip, when, and what for.
And now, there's an exciting TravelPerk and Spendesk integration! The benefits of this integration include:
Automation: invoices are automatically synchronised
Approval flows: avoid duplicates
Accounting tools: export separate journal entries into your accounting tools.
Finance teams can give their colleagues autonomy to book trips and still have control and visibility over what was booked.
2. AirBnb for Work
You may never have even heard of AirBnb for Work. It’s not too different from the consumer version - you can book a wide range of accommodation types for your travelling team.
But there are a few key differences:
Bookings are linked to the company profile. So a team member can book the property they like, and the finance team will be able to get the details and invoice later without having to chase people.
It’s not just overnight accommodation. There are spaces to rent for meetings and conferences and even temporary office space to rent.
AirBnb Experiences also help you find good team-building activities if you’re taking a group with you on the road.
“With the dashboard, we can view where all of our employees are travelling and where they are staying, as well as the average rate that we are spending and the cost savings that we have every year,” said Ashley Schmitz, Regional Lead Executive Assistant for Campari America.
If you like using AirBnb for your personal travel, AirBnb for Work gives you all the same options but lets the company track bookings more easily.
3. TravelBank
TravelBank is similar to TravelPerk (above). It’s a centralised tool to let team members book all their travel in one place.
That means you can find, book, and track trips from beginning to end. And as we’ve said, giving your team members one central location to book and pay is always a big benefit.
But most users love it just as much for its expense reports functions. Like some of the tools below, the user can screenshot receipts for flights or ground transport, and these are matched to charges on the company card.
This helps to automate the expense report process - maybe the worst aspect of work travel both for employees and the finance team.
Another interesting feature is the ability for individual travellers to earn rewards through TravelBank. Instead of maxing out their travel budget, users get personal rewards for bringing the company a discount. That’s a nice way to incentivize responsible spending.
4. Flightfox
If you’re not ready to completely say goodbye to travel agents, Flightfox may be a great option for you. It uses a network of travel experts to help travellers book the perfect experience every time.
And rather than having to go into a travel agent’s office, you just enter a few details online.
Their manifesto states:
"At Flightfox, we are solving business travel complexity by being transparent with fees. We focus purely on becoming genuine experts in travel and maximising the value we deliver to you."
And the reviews are good. Users are genuinely surprised and happy with the service they receive.
Most of these flights and hotel deals are available easily online. But most are only available briefly, and you have little chance of finding and reserving them yourself. Flightfox keeps an eye out for you, and can offer deals you'd otherwise surely miss.
This is one of the reasons that travel agents were so successful for so many years. And Flightfox puts a team of them at your disposal wherever you are.
Tools to manage travel spending
Monitoring and controlling travel spending is no easy task. You have a mixture of payments with company cards, invoices and wire transfers for large purchases, and employees using their own money and claiming reimbursements.
You need to track every one of these payments, assign them to the right people and teams, and keep a lid on budgets.
Without a little help, you don’t stand a chance.
These tools make it that little bit simpler to know who’s spending what, where, and when.
5. Spendesk
How do your teams pay for travel? Whether it’s booking flights online, paying for hotels on arrival, or buying a coffee on the way to a conference, this should all be logged as travel spending for a single event.
But that gets tricky. If a traveller buys the flights with the company card (from the office), then pays for the rest with their own money weeks later, it’s not always easy to match these up to the same user (and the same budget).
Spendesk changes that. It gives you different payment methods but always linked to the same user. They pay online with a virtual credit card, then take their prepaid expense card with them on the road. Both are in their name, so you always know who’s spending - unlike with the company card.
And if they do need to spend their own money, they can automatically generate expense reports and then link these to their same user profile. So again, this spending matches up with the rest.
Because all of this spending is logged in real time, it also lets your finance team track spending as it happens. That’s not the case with classic expense reports, which most teams file at the end of the month.
To put it in a nutshell, if you care about safe, secure travel spending, Spendesk is a great option.
6. Spendee
If you’re not ready for a dedicated business expense management tool, Spendee is a nice workaround. It’s an app that tracks what you spend in real-time and lets you attach receipts.
While it’s not actually built for business users, your travelling team members can easily use this great little app to track their spending as they go. It will help ensure that they record every payment - big or small.
Plus, they can add managers or finance team members to their account, so you’ll have visibility over these purchases.
A few interesting extras
Booking trips and managing payments are usually the two biggest hurdles to overcome. But there are still helpful tools and services that take some of the pain out of travelling for work.
Here are a few of our favourites.
7. TripIt
TripIt’s a handy tool that helps users build an itinerary from their bookings. Just forward every confirmation email to TripIt, and you have an itinerary you can access from your phone or computer, wherever you are.
It even provides maps to help you get from place to place in your itinerary. And TripIt Pro has added features like a Seat Tracker to help you choose the best seats on your flight.
And there’s a free version, so you really don’t have a reason not to try it.
8. Google Travel
)
What was previously known as Google Trips has evolved into Google Travel.
At its core, Google Travel helps you plan trips and display all of your travel information easily.
Google Travel does what Google does best: aggregates all the most helpful information in one place. So you don't have to switch between a million sites, online brochures and forum threads to find flights, hotels, activities, maps, weather, and then compare all the deals. Google Travel does it all for you in a single (and helpful) step.
All the information is saved in your Google account, stored in one single spot. Confirmations sent to your Gmail get automatically added to your itinerary.
Google Travel also displays Covid-19 information specific to your destination, which is a must these days.
It’s not strictly for business users. But anyone who needs to plan a trip and keep their plans in one place will love Google Travel.
9. AirHelp
What do you do when things go wrong? More importantly, when a team member has a flight rerouted or cancelled, will they know what to do next?
AirHelp tells travellers their rights. If flights are cancelled or delayed significantly, AirHelp tells you whether you’re eligible for compensation, and what to do next.
This is something that most business travellers don’t even think about. They just assume everything will work out fine, and if not, the company has to pay anyway.
But they may be missing out on immediate help. And they can also assist the company to recoup costs, which helps their budget and your bottom line.
If your teams are armed with Airhelp, they’ll at least know the options available to them.
10. PackPoint
)
Forgetting to pack an item on your personal vacation isn't the end of the world. But forgetting to pack something for a work trip? That could spell disaster.
Use Pack Point to make a list and check off important items while packing for business trips. Ensure that you have your laptop, charger, portfolio, special files, and any other make-or-break items.
The app helps you determine your packing list with crucial details such as weather at your destination and length of stay. Input your activities and the app will guide you through the packing process.
Sit back, enjoy your flight, and bask in the peace of mind that comes with knowing you've got everything you need in your bag.
Take a few travel tools for a test drive
So there were 10 helpful tools to help manage your business travel. The only thing left for you to do is try them out and see which ones suit you best.
As you do, have a few key things in mind. You want to:
Give your travellers more flexibility and choice
Track and manage spending in real time
Keep control in the hands of the finance team
Save as much time as possible in the process
If the tool you're trying out can't do one or more of these things, it's probably not a good fit.
Happy travelling!
Patrick Whatman
Patrick Whatman is a content marketer and writer. He lives in Paris, loves music, and writes his own brand of cultural criticism for fun. Tweet him @mrwhatman where he mainly talks digital marketing, American sports and New Zealand trivia.
)
)
)
)