How to reduce the costs of corporate travel?

There are two approaches: bad and good. The awful choice is saving on the comfort of the employees you send on the trip. Read on to find out what the right way is.

But first, let’s answer the question of why saving on the comfort of travelers is unprofitable: An employee who has to fly the cheapest connections and sleep in hotels of the lowest standard will not be motivated to achieve the business goal of your company. And if the journey is tiring, the worker’s efficiency will suffer.

 

How to save without worsening the employee’s comfort while traveling? What generates the greatest costs on a business trip?

It is worth considering what really generates costs. Our observations and conversations with clients show that the most common problems are:

  • Lack of control over the employee’s travel expenses (an employee surprises his superiors with the costs generated by his trip).
  • Last-minute booking (when there is little time to rethink your travel plan, employees make costly mistakes).
  • Spending a lot of work time organizing the trip while it can be done faster.
  • Wasting working time on accounting and document flow while it can be simplified.

 

How to reduce business travel costs?

The problem arises from the fact that the supervisor rarely has time to check the travel plan prepared by the employee.

At Hotailors, thanks to the collection of all business travel-related processes into one intuitive, browser-accessible system, approval of travel plans is quick and takes place in two steps.

Step 1. The employee plans his trip and then sends it for approval.

Step 2. The supervisor immediately gets access to all the key elements of the travel plan (dates, costs, flights, and hotels selected by the employee, as well as compliance with the travel policy) and can approve, reject or advise changes.

 

From the employee’s point of view, the process takes an average of 5 minutes (see example), and approval by the superior is even faster (example of approval).

Hotailors customers can designate the so-called Approvers — people who have more authority and can approve a trip based on company policy or budget. Travel managers, heads of departments, management assistants, or employees who have the best understanding of economic travel arrangements are most often chosen to be approvers.

Thanks to the implementation of travel plan approval procedures, the company avoids situations in which an employee, for example, checks in at the most expensive hotel, while an average standard would suffice.

 

Last-minute booking — how to avoid mishaps?

To be honest, there is not always time to think over the travel plan and wait for the boss’s approval. Sometimes organizing an international flight must be done ASAP, so as to catch on to a business opportunity.

In order to avoid significant costs caused by rush, it is necessary to set travel policies under the internal policy of a company.

Thanks to Hotailors technology, it is possible to control the travel budget without involving superiors. It is enough to design travel policies that will contain restrictions on expenses, the standard of flights, and hotels adapted to the rank of the employee. Then the travel planner will see all restrictions in the system. This is a convenience for the employee — he will not have to wonder if the boss will agree to a 5-star hotel. In this way, the traveler will not exceed the budget and at the same time will not involve the boss when planning each delegation.

 

How to save time when planning a trip?

The solution is to use a smart digital system.

Instead of accessing the websites of airlines and hotels separately, or using websites tailored to individuals rather than companies (B2B oriented), the person planning a trip should log into one system that will show them the best options and provide the information needed to make a decision. One dashboard to control everything (linked to the travel policy, of course).

 

How to improve settlements and document circulation for business trips?

A business trip generates a lot of documents. Upon return, the employee has to deal with invoices instead of going straight to his duties. In this case, the company incurs additional costs.

Fortunately, all settlements related to a business trip can be optimized and the document circulation can be shortened.

At Hotailors, we oversee all travel expenses. Therefore, our clients do not have to settle dozens of invoices, for they receive one collective invoice — from us.

 

Here are examples of expenses we supervise and aggregate into one collective invoice issued as agreed (e.g. monthly, biweekly):

  • use of airlines
  • hotel reservation
  • the food at the hotel
  • parking fees
  • car rental
  • insurance
  • and other

All in one place, at one invoice.

 

To organize business trips cheaper, you need to optimize the processes in the company. At Hotailors, we offer a SaaS solution. It is a system based on machine learning and AI technology, supported by human experts (customer service 24/7), which makes it possible to organize business trips up to 30% cheaper and 90% faster on average.

Our solution is simple, transparent, intuitive to use, and easy to implement (even large companies are able to implement the Hotailors system overnight (48 hours).

Please contact us, we will be happy to show you how our solution can reduce the costs of business trips in your company.

 

Bes regards,
The Hotailors team