How Companies Can Control Non-Employee Travel Costs

Managing travel costs for your own employees is a familiar challenge. You have established policies, integrated systems, and clear lines of accountability. But what about the other travelers your company is responsible for? The freelance consultant flying in for a project, the guest speaker for your annual conference, or the final-round job candidate. This category of "non-employee" travel is a significant and rapidly growing area of corporate spend, yet for many companies, it remains a chaotic and uncontrolled "wild west."

Without a formal system in place, non-employee travel is often managed through a messy combination of email requests, personal bookings, and manual reimbursements. This not only creates a poor experience for your valued guests but also represents a major financial blind spot. A lack of policy, visibility, and control can lead to significant overspending, budget uncertainty, and a heavy administrative burden on your internal teams.

Gaining control over non-employee travel costs is not about being restrictive; it's about being strategic. It requires a thoughtful approach that combines clear policy, the right technology, and streamlined processes. This guide provides a comprehensive framework for how your company can effectively manage and control the costs associated with non-employee travel, turning a chaotic process into a well-managed and financially predictable one.

The Problem: Why Non-Employee Travel is a Budget Black Hole

In an unmanaged environment, non-employee travel costs spiral out of control for several key reasons:

No Policy Guardrails: Without a clear policy, your guests have no idea what they are allowed to spend. What one person considers a "reasonable" hotel, another might see as extravagant. This leads to inconsistent and often excessive spending.
Zero Pre-Trip Visibility: When a consultant books their own flight, you have no visibility into that cost until they submit an invoice or expense report weeks later. This makes it impossible to track spending against a project budget in real time.
Paying Retail and Last-Minute Premiums: Non-employees do not have access to your company's negotiated rates or your travel management platform's inventory. They are booking on public websites, often at the last minute, and paying the highest possible public fares.
Administrative Overload: Your finance and project management teams are burdened with processing a mountain of invoices and reimbursement requests, each with different formats and varying levels of detail. The time spent on this manual reconciliation is a significant hidden cost.

The Solution: A Strategic Framework for Cost Control

Effectively managing non-employee travel costs requires a structured approach. The key is to bring these travelers into a managed system that provides both a great experience for them and robust control for you.

Strategy 1: Create a Formal Non-Employee Travel Policy

You cannot control what you have not defined. The first step is to create a simple, clear travel policy specifically for your non-employee travelers. This should be a separate, more streamlined version of your internal employee travel policy.

What to Include:
- Booking Process: State clearly how travel will be booked. The best practice is for the company to book on behalf of the non-employee.
- Air Travel: Specify the allowed cabin class (always Economy) and the policy on advance booking.
- Accommodation: Provide a clear per-night rate cap based on the city, or direct the guest to a list of pre-approved company hotels.
- Ground Transportation: Outline the rules for car rentals or ride-sharing.
- Meals and Expenses: Define a reasonable per-diem allowance for meals. Be explicit about what is and is not a reimbursable expense.
How to Use It: This policy document should be shared with the non-employee (and their employer, if applicable) before any travel is booked. It sets clear expectations from the start and prevents awkward conversations about out-of-policy expenses later.

Strategy 2: Centralize All Bookings (Stop Reimbursing, Start Booking)

The single most effective way to control costs is for your company to handle the booking process directly. The model of asking a candidate or consultant to book their own trip and then reimbursing them is a recipe for overspending.

The Process:
1. Assign an "Arranger": Designate a person within your company (often a recruiter, project manager, or executive assistant) to be the "travel arranger" for non-employees.
2. Use a "Guest Booking" Tool: This is where a modern travel management platform is essential. A platform like Routespring has a "guest booking" or "arranger" feature that allows your internal coordinator to book travel on behalf of an external guest.
3. Gather Necessary Information: The arranger collects the guest's essential information (legal name for the ticket, date of birth, contact details) and creates a temporary guest profile in the system.
4. Book Within Policy: The arranger then uses the platform to book the flight and hotel, adhering to your non-employee travel policy. The system's policy engine will automatically flag any out-of-policy options, ensuring compliance.
The Impact on Cost Control:
- You Control the Purchase: Your company is making the booking, which means you control the choice of airline, hotel, and the price paid. You can ensure the lowest logical fare is chosen.
- Access to Your Rates: The booking is made through your platform, giving you access to any corporate rates or discounts you have negotiated.
- Pre-Trip Visibility: The cost is known and captured in your system before the trip even happens, providing real-time budget visibility.

Strategy 3: Centralize Payments to Eliminate Invoicing Headaches

The Strategy: When your company books the travel, you should also pay for it directly using a centralized company payment method (like a central corporate card or a virtual card) that is integrated into your travel platform.
The Impact on Cost Control:
- No More Inflated Invoices: You avoid the situation where a contractor pays a high last-minute fare and then passes that cost on to you in their invoice.
- Simplified Accounting: Your finance team is not chasing invoices from multiple vendors. The transaction is cleanly captured in your travel platform, with all the necessary coding, and can be automatically synced to your accounting system.

Strategy 4: Use Project Codes and Tags for Granular Tracking

For non-employee travel, it's critical to know not just what you are spending, but why you are spending it.

The Strategy: Your travel platform should allow your arranger to "tag" every booking with a specific project code, customer name, recruiting event, or department cost center.
The Impact on Cost Control: This provides incredibly granular data for analysis. At the end of a project, you can instantly run a report for that project's code and see the total, itemized travel cost. This is essential for understanding the true cost of a project, calculating profitability, and accurately billing clients if the travel costs are pass-through expenses.

Strategy 5: Offer a Curated List of Preferred Hotels

Instead of just giving a guest a price cap, provide them with a better experience by giving them a few great options to choose from.

The Strategy: Work with your TMC to identify and negotiate rates with a few good-quality, safe, and conveniently located hotels near your office.
The Impact on Cost Control: By directing volume to these few hotels, you can often secure a better rate than you would otherwise. It also provides your guests with a better and safer experience, which reflects well on your company. Your travel arranger can then offer the guest a choice between these 2-3 pre-approved options.

By moving non-employee travel from an unmanaged, ad-hoc process to a structured, centralized, and technology-driven program, you can achieve significant cost control while simultaneously providing a more professional and impressive experience for your guests. It's a strategic shift that delivers a clear and compelling return on investment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Is it appropriate to ask a high-level consultant or guest speaker to follow our travel policy? Yes, absolutely. It is a standard and professional business practice. The key is to communicate the policy clearly and respectfully at the beginning of the engagement. Frame it as your company's standard procedure for managing guest travel logistics. Most professionals are accustomed to this and will appreciate the clarity.

2. What is the most effective way to handle on-trip expenses like meals for non-employees? While you can book their flights and hotels directly, on-trip meals are typically handled via reimbursement. The best practice is to provide them with a clear per-diem limit in your non-employee travel policy. After the trip, they can submit their receipts for reimbursement. Some modern expense tools even have a simple feature for external guests to submit receipts without needing a full software license.

3. What if a candidate wants to book their own travel? This is a common request, but it's where you can politely insist on your process, framing it as a benefit to them. You can say, "To make the process as smooth as possible for you and to ensure you don't have to pay out-of-pocket, our standard process is to have our team handle the travel arrangements for all our candidates. We would be happy to work with you to find flight times that are convenient for your schedule."

4. How does a travel management platform's "guest booking" feature work? A good platform allows a designated "travel arranger" inside your company to create a temporary, lightweight profile for a guest. This profile contains just the essential information needed for a booking (legal name, DOB, etc.). The arranger can then log in, access the booking tool as if they were the guest, and make the booking on their behalf. The booking is then associated with the guest's profile, and the itinerary is sent directly to them.

5. We are a small company. Is it worth setting up a formal process for this? Yes. Even if you only have a few non-employee travelers a year, establishing a formal process from the beginning is a smart, scalable practice. It sets a professional tone, ensures you are controlling costs from day one, and creates a framework that can easily grow with your business. Using a platform with a free or low-cost tier makes this accessible to any size company.