Organizing employee business trips can facilitate meaningful connections with colleagues and clients, plus help close important deals; yet the coordination process encompasses many variables, making it potentially challenging – especially with last-minute visa requirements, disrupted flights, and unforeseen expenses.
Whether this is your inaugural corporate travel booking experience or you’ve coordinated dozens, continue reading to explore various business travel categories, obstacles you’ll face, important factors, and why collaborating with a business travel agent like DW Travel offers superior ease and efficiency.
What is corporate travel?
Unsurprisingly, corporate travel describes company staff traveling for professional reasons; this could mean client consultations, contract negotiations, or conference attendance.
The organizational process requires arranging air travel, lodging, and ground transportation, plus confirming all country-entry documentation is secured, while preparing your personnel for their journey.
The challenges of booking corporate travel yourself
Given the numerous logistics involved in business travel arrangements, various challenges may emerge throughout the process. However, adequate preparation and process familiarity can help reduce these difficulties.
Not having a clear process
Absence of defined procedures invites chaos! Requesting employees source their own lodging could result in budget overruns, or insufficient response times, creating rushed last-minute arrangements.
Additionally, lacking a centralized booking platform for employee travel requests means receiving communications via multiple channels from various staff, significantly increasing the likelihood of overlooking something important.
Unless already implemented, create detailed booking workflows that anyone – including new team members – can easily execute by consulting written instructions. Communicate this framework to employees ensuring they know the appropriate contact person, and proper travel request procedures, substantially streamlining your workload.
Regular travel updates
Departure times might shift, location changes may occur, or nations’ political landscapes can rapidly transform; serving as the business travel manager, you’ll be tasked with staying informed about all updates, and delivering consistent travel communications to all stakeholders, which proves extraordinarily time-consuming; and may trigger sudden itinerary changes.
Getting approval
You’ll need finance and HR budget authorization, plus traveling employees’ confirmation they’re satisfied with proposed itineraries, and opportunities to ask questions.
Some situations proceed smoothly; alternatively, you might face objections – circumstances that business travel management firms can address on your behalf.
Managing costs
Business travel arrangements demand budgets covering all expenses – airfare and hotels, through to ground transport and dining.
Even meticulously crafted budgets can be difficult maintaining control over – especially when staff want to choose their own accommodations, or urgent booking modifications don’t allow refunds. Again, you’ll be accountable for maintaining that budget, while accounting for all possibilities.
The different types of corporate business travel
Numerous circumstances require arranging employee business trips, with several examples highlighted below.
Client meetings
Your employee might be traveling for external objectives, such as client appointments. Numerous nations and cultures globally, like Japan and throughout Asia, deeply value face-to-face interactions, rendering them invaluable for cultivating and preserving relationships, or finalizing agreements.
Internal travel
Organizations with worldwide offices will likely need employees visiting alternate locations, for colleague meetings – whether conducting in-person discussions, or learning about new methodologies or culture that different offices have implemented, or achieved success with.
On similar notes, company retreats provide another justification for international travel, facilitating everyone gathering in one venue, where they dedicate a few days engaging in diverse activities, deepening their understanding of one another.
Office transfers
Organizations with international locations will probably have staff relocating – whether permanent country changes, or temporary assignments, for instance, when they’re needed for particular projects, or launching new offices.
Office transfers typically present more complicated corporate travel aspects, requiring research into – and procurement of – proper visas and documentation enabling your employee(s) legal employment rights in the country; while offering settlement support, such as housing assistance.
Bleisure travel
Numerous employees find substantial value in combining corporate business trips with personal leisure, providing them downtime to experience new destinations – hence the term ‘bleisure’. This benefits organizations too, allowing your employees to relax and recharge during this period, before returning to work revitalized.
For bleisure travel arrangements, companies typically cover return transportation and accommodation required for the business trip nights, with employees financing remaining hotel costs, though this entirely depends on your organization’s policy.
Conferences and events
Alternatively, employees may need attending conferences for knowledge expansion, or joining networking events to broaden their professional connections. Similarly, trade fairs can be vital corporate travel components, granting employees priceless direct access to prospective customers, to boost business revenue.
How to improve your corporate travel
Now understanding the factors you’ll need considering when organizing corporate travel, we’ve outlined several additional steps you can take (or we can support with), that will truly elevate your employee(s) international experience, and guarantee they have fantastic trips.
Give employees an itinerary
Following all that research, and completing necessary reservations, assemble comprehensive itineraries outlining everything day-by-day, and furnish travelers with both physical printouts, and electronic versions, in case they lose the hard copy.
In your itinerary you’ll want to cover:
- Transfer to the airport: This includes pick-up times, and where they’ll be picked up from.
- Flight times: This includes the take-off time, any layovers, and relevant flight code(s).
- Transfer on arrival at their destination: Where they’ll be met, the number plate of the car, and the driver’s name and contact details, if you have them to hand.
- Accommodation: This includes the address, check in/out times, contact details, whether or not breakfast is served (and timings), and details of any extra amenities they have.
- Things to do: For whatever reason your employee(s) may be travelling, you may need to let them know what time they need to be at a venue, meeting times, travel times, where and when dinner has been booked, etc.
- Free time options: Adding in your research on the top things to do, lunch or restaurant spots, and more, will be a nice touch.
- Emergency contact details: Any names, phone numbers, and email addresses of people either in your office, and who they’re meeting will be really handy if timings are late, or if employees need something last minute when they’re out there.
Research your destination
Upon securing accommodation, and prior to employee travel, conducting destination research helps them feel considerably more prepared. Examine weather forecasts, destination security (including crime rates, and political conditions), plus closest public transportation options, and medical facilities if they become ill. Basically, you’ll want complete preparation should the worst occur!
However, it’s not exclusively pessimistic, as there’s loads of enjoyable research as well, such as dining establishments and bars near the hotel, plus premier attractions, and activities during their free time.
Brief employees before they fly
For complete coverage, we’d suggest scheduling conversations with employee(s) allowing you to review travel logistics, and let them pose any questions they have. With certain countries requiring specific arrival documents, this becomes the perfect moment to remind employees which documentation they need readily available when traveling, to guarantee smooth experiences.
Things to consider when booking corporate travel
Having discussed the challenges, there are countless logistics you’ll need addressing when booking business travel, to guarantee everything proceeds smoothly – and this explains why numerous companies select corporate travel agencies like ourselves, to remove the headache from it.
Book accommodation and flights in advance
Securing the best prices, advance booking usually proves the simplest approach – although that’s not consistently feasible with corporate travel, with certain arrangements only confirmed at short notice.
For accommodation booking, pricing isn’t the only factor to consider. Proximity to the venue will be crucial, along with public transport access, and area safety.
You’ll also want investigating amenities like breakfast, and organizing alternatives if that’s not provided; plus conference rooms (when required), and a gym, spa, and swimming pool, which can be attractive additions for employees staying several nights.
Prior to booking, ensure you examine the reviews, filtering specifically to corporate travellers where feasible, to obtain the most accurate hotel overview.
Obtain all necessary information
For ensuring the trip proceeds smoothly, you’ll need confirming employees’ passports are current, and all necessary international visas have been secured, to permit them entering the country they’ll be visiting.
You’ll also want gathering items like emergency contact information, food preferences, so you can accommodate their requirements while they’re overseas; and their residential address, so you can coordinate the required pick-up/drop off transportation, plus planning the most efficient route, when there are several people traveling together.
Why use a business travel management company instead?
Realistically, there’s a lot that needs to be covered when booking corporate travel, which is why many companies use a service like DW Travel, to do the hard work for them!
Some of the benefits of using a business travel management company include:
- 24/7 help: Hopefully, your employees’ time abroad will run smoothly, but there’s always a chance of something unexpected happening! Whether it’s a cancelled flight, or a quickly changing political situation that means employees need to leave, we’re only a phone call away. We’ll always be there for you and your colleagues, and our partnership with a dedicated risk management company means your employees will always be safe.
- Reduction of errors: With so many moving parts involved in booking corporate travel, it’s easy for something to be missed. However, working with a professional corporate travel management company like DW Travel means that errors will be minimised. Simply let us know your requirements, and we’ll take care of the rest!
- Help set a company travel policy: One of the main headaches of keeping corporate travel internal, is the need to set up a standardised policy. By using a management system, that’s automatically done for you, with one clear procedure for everyone in your company to follow.
- Manual work is reduced: Forget researching hotels closest to your chosen venue, working out pick-up times for transport, and confirming flight codes – the manual admin of corporate travel will be taken away from you with a corporate travel management company; freeing up your time to focus on other tasks.
- Tracking approvals process: With everything done online through one system, both you and your employees will easily be able to see where you’re at with approvals, and what needs chasing.
- Risk reduction: There are many risks to booking overseas travel at work, and it’s easy to overlook something. Partner with DW Travel, and we’ll not only ensure that all the visas and legal paperwork are taken care of for travel, but that risk assessments are conducted for the destination employees are visiting, alongside a review of your duty of care obligations, and so much more.
- Cost saving: We partner with the best in the business, which means that we’re able to enjoy significant savings on flights, accommodation, and more, which we pass on to you.
For more information about how DW Travel can help you with your corporate travel, please get in touch with us today.