How to Build a Travel Program Your Team Actually Uses

It’s the most common and frustrating problem in corporate travel management. Your company invests in a travel platform, you write a detailed policy, and you tell your employees to use the new system. A few months later, you look at the data and discover that a huge percentage of your team is still booking their flights and hotels on public consumer websites. This "rogue booking" is not just a minor compliance issue; it’s a fatal flaw that undermines your entire travel program. You lose cost control, you have no visibility into spending, and you can’t fulfill your Duty of Care to keep your travelers safe.

The typical corporate response is to blame the employees and send out another sternly worded memo about policy. This never works. The hard truth is that your employees are not the problem. The problem is that your travel program is providing a poor user experience. In the battle for your employees' "bookings," you are competing with the seamless, user-friendly experience of sites like Google Flights and Expedia. If your official program is not as good, or better, you will lose.

Building a travel program with high adoption rates is not about creating more restrictive rules. It’s about creating a better product. You need to build a program that your employees want to use because it makes their lives easier. This guide provides a clear playbook for fixing the "adoption killers" in your current program and building a system that your team will actually embrace.

Understanding the "Why" Behind Rogue Bookings

Employees don't book off-channel because they are malicious. They do it because they believe it's a better, faster, or cheaper option for them. They are making a rational choice based on the poor value proposition your current program offers. The main drivers of this behavior—the "adoption killers"—are almost always the same.

Adoption Killer #1: A Clunky, Frustrating User Experience This is the original sin of most legacy travel platforms. Your employees are used to consumer-grade technology in their personal lives. When your corporate tool is slow, confusing, and has a user interface that looks like it’s from 2005, they will refuse to use it.

Adoption Killer #2: Slow and Opaque Approval Processes Your employee finds the perfect flight, but they can't book it. They have to send an email to their manager and wait for an approval that might take two days. By the time they get the "OK," the price of the flight has gone up by $200. This experience teaches them that the official process is slow and costs them (and the company) money.

Adoption Killer #3: The Reimbursement Headache This is the biggest pain point for most travelers. Expecting your employees to put thousands of dollars in flights and hotels on their personal credit card and then wait weeks to get reimbursed is a major financial and administrative burden. It’s a source of constant stress and resentment. Why would an employee use the official tool if the reward is a mountain of paperwork and a temporary loan to their employer?

How to Fix Your Adoption Problem: A Step-by-Step Guide

To achieve high adoption, you need to systematically eliminate these friction points and create a program that offers undeniable value to the traveler.

1. Provide a World-Class, Consumer-Grade Booking Tool Your official booking tool can't be "good enough." It has to be great.

• The Fix: Invest in a modern travel management platform like Routespring that is built with the user experience at its core. The interface must be as fast, clean, and intuitive as the best consumer websites.
• The Impact: This immediately removes the primary excuse for booking off-channel. When the official tool is a pleasure to use, there is no reason to go elsewhere.

2. Make Approvals Instantaneous and Mobile The approval process should be a seamless, 30-second task, not a multi-day waiting game.

• The Fix: Use a platform with a fully automated, mobile-first approval workflow. When a trip is submitted, the manager should get an instant notification on their phone. The notification should contain all the key information they need—total cost, any policy flags, budget impact—and allow them to approve or deny with a single tap.
• The Impact: This eliminates the approval bottleneck. Flights can be ticketed immediately, locking in lower fares. The traveler gets a fast answer and can move on.

3. Kill the Reimbursement Process with Centralized Payments This is the most powerful strategy for winning over your employees.

• The Fix: Use a platform that offers centralized payments for all major travel expenses. When an employee books a flight or hotel, the company pays for it directly. The employee never has to use their personal credit card.
• The Impact: This is a game-changer for the traveler experience. It removes the single biggest source of financial stress and administrative work associated with business travel. The promise of "no more out-of-pocket travel costs" is an incredibly powerful incentive for an employee to use your official platform.

4. Provide In-App Policy Clarity Employees often book out of policy because they don't know the rules, which are buried in a long, confusing document.

• The Fix: The travel policy must be automated and visible within the booking tool. The system should use simple, color-coded visual cues to flag compliant and non-compliant options. A pop-up should explain why a choice is out of policy in plain language (e.g., "This flight is above the 'lowest logical fare'").
• The Impact: This empowers the employee to make the right decision at the point of sale. It removes the guesswork and the fear of getting in trouble, which builds trust and confidence in the program.

5. Communicate the Value, Not Just the Mandate How you communicate your travel program is critical.

• The Fix: Stop sending emails that say, "You must use the new tool because it's our policy." Instead, market the program to your employees by focusing on the benefits to them.
• The Right Message: "We're launching a new travel platform that will make your life easier. You can now book your own trips in minutes from your phone. You'll never have to pay for a flight or hotel with your own money again. And if anything goes wrong, you have 24/7 expert support."
• The Impact: When employees see the program as a valuable benefit, not just a set of rules, they will embrace it willingly.

A Real-World Adoption Story

One of our clients, a 250-person software company, was struggling with a less than 40% adoption rate on their old, legacy TMC platform. Their T&E process was a mess. We worked with them to implement Routespring, focusing on these core principles. The results were dramatic.

• Before Routespring: 40% in-tool adoption. Average time from trip completion to reimbursement was 28 days.
• After Routespring (3 months later): 96% in-tool adoption. Because of centralized payments, the average reimbursement time for the remaining out-of-pocket expenses dropped to just 4 days.
• The ROI: The company saw a 22% reduction in their total T&E spend in the first six months, driven almost entirely by the improved compliance from their high adoption rate.

Your employees are not the problem. They are simply responding to the process you have given them. By building a travel program that is truly designed to serve the traveler, you can solve your adoption problem and unlock the significant financial and operational benefits of a well-managed program.