Tips for Travel Managers Creating a Successful Corporate Travel Budget
A domestic business trip that lasts three days typically incurs costs ranging from $990 to $1,293 on average, which can cause nightmares in your corporate travel budget.
Why it matters: Travel managers work hard to reduce expenses wherever possible. With a single business trip’s average cost of nearly a thousand dollars, managing expenses across several trips at once requires constant monitoring.
- Travel expenses can be troublesome for travel managers, as they come in many forms – from dining to hotel stays, car rentals, and airfare. Creating a corporate travel budget plan that allows for a margin of error and provides nimble solutions is crucial to effectively managing employee travel expenses.
What’s next: We want you to help your employees reach their destinations while saving money. That’s why we’ll offer tips for crafting a successful corporate travel budget.
Analyze your company’s spending and create a detailed corporate travel budget
Uncovering the significance of examining your company’s expenditures is the first step to crafting a corporate travel budget tailored to your needs.
- Review past trips: Analyze your past corporate travels’ expenditure trends for any unexpected spikes. Such insights can aid you in refining your current travel policy and keeping your expenses in check.
- Identify areas for improvement: Miscommunication between the travel policy and employees or underutilization of reimbursement policies can lead to gaps and adherence to travel expenses. Identifying the root cause of these gaps can enable smoother travel expense experiences and better expense management.
- Allocate funds accordingly: By assessing past expenses, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and prioritizing essential spending categories, travel managers can allocate funds efficiently. This creates a corporate travel budget structure that addresses your company’s travel requirements while optimizing financial resources.
Monitor hotel loyalty programs for additional discounts
You can amplify your corporate travel budget by closely monitoring hotel loyalty programs. These programs provide exclusive discounts and perks to their members, empowering you to get more from your travel spending.
- Keep track of points and promotions: Take advantage of hotel discounts. Check if your company has any unused hotel rewards that you can benefit from.
- Redeem points for free stays: If your company has held a hotel membership for a while, chances are you’ve accumulated rewards that can be redeemed to book hotel stays for employees without spending a penny.
Remember: There are travel management platforms that give businesses a chance to include loyalty programs in their profile. Guess what? We’re one of them!
Set aside a portion of the corporate travel budget for last-minute changes in travel plans
Things happen, and only some things go as planned. Flights get delayed or canceled, hotels lose reservations, and car rental booking gets lost. So as a travel manager, being prepared for the unexpected can save you extra travel expenses.
What you can do: Entact these tips on effectively managing unforeseen expenses and maintaining flexibility in your corporate travel budget.
- Be prepared for unforeseen expenses: Travel plans can change rapidly due to various factors, such as flight cancellations, inclement weather, or sudden shifts in business needs. To avoid financial strain, anticipate potential disruptions and allocate a portion of the corporate travel budget for unexpected expenses. (By the way, Routespring’s 24-hour customer service, provided at no extra cost, is rated as one of the best.)
- Maintain a contingency fund: A contingency fund is essential to any corporate travel budget. This reserve allows travel managers to address unplanned costs without jeopardizing the overall budget or compromising the quality of the trip.
- Learn to adapt and adjust: Flexibility is key when managing a corporate travel budget, especially when dealing with last-minute plan changes. Be ready to adapt and adjust the budget as needed, reallocating funds between categories or identifying cost-saving opportunities.
Final thoughts
Crafting a successful corporate travel budget doesn’t need to be daunting. While managing expenses can be tricky, it is certainly achievable.
The big picture: By actively reducing expenses during business trips, travel managers can allocate corporate travel budgets more effectively and save money.
- One thing to remember: consistent real-time travel cost monitoring provides deep insights into planning for future travel costs.
- Collaborating with a platform that allows effortless customization of your travel policies as per new corporate travel budget restrictions while ensuring complete transparency on your business travel is the key to success.
Try us out for free and experience why we’re the perfect choice for cost-effective corporate travel.
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