How to Choose a Travel Management Solution for Businesses

A travel management tool for companies is a mechanism that allows users to make reservations, control and analyze everything related to business trips. It contains a package of accommodations, flights and even transportation that allow travelers to carry out their trip, as well as a series of documents to obtain total control over all business travel.

Key features of a travel management system:

1. Travel policies.

It is one of the most important aspects of the company and a good management tool. The travel policy will designate a series of criteria that will personalize the trip of each traveler within the company. Some of these criteria are:

• Hotel prices
• Maximum train cost
• Flight Fees

By having a correct travel policy, we can control expenses within the assigned limits. Therefore, it is important to have a tool that makes this task easier for us.

2. Autonomy for the traveler.

One of the main objectives of acquiring a business travel management tool or platform is to free the company from time-consuming and costly tasks.

The number of emails and confirmations required when traveling is extremely high.

Therefore, if we use a management platform, we can automate this entire process so that the start of the trip starts as soon as possible and we can avoid lost reservations and unnecessary delays.

3. Travel expense reports

Another feature of travel management systems are expense sheets. Having adequate information on all the cost of travel-related processes is of vital importance for the company.

To optimize trips, it is important to have all types of expenses broken down by date, duration, department, traveler, event, for example.

4. 24-hour support at no cost.

Technology and automation are of great importance and it is one of the characteristics that define the use of new tools.

However, today's companies still require human staff with whom they can have a close relationship when it comes to talking about their problems or asking for some kind of help. All this without entailing an additional cost for the company.

Having a support team at all times is of great interest to companies that tend to travel often because they need someone who can assist them if any mishap occurs during their business trip.

5. Single bill.

Business travel is a major challenge for the financial department. This is because during a certain period a company makes a number of trips, in different months of the year, by different employees within the company.

If the volume of trips is significant, this results in a large number of bills with different types of expenses that cause disorder and confusion within the department.

If we choose the business travel management tool suitable, we can unify all types of expenses in a single invoice. In other words, we will be able to summarize the expenses of all trips, of all travelers, made in a specific period.

6. Mobile platform for travelers

It seems logical, but there are numerous management tools that are not adapted for the employee's use during the trip.

Having an application with a mobile version is really necessary. Travelers must be able to book their own trip and they must be able to interact with the platform at the destination for any type of need: 24-hour support, reservations, expense records, etc.

Although it may not seem interesting to the company, it is of great importance for employees who travel, since they will experience this user experience firsthand and, therefore, it is necessary to have a simple version adapted to all staff.

7. Speed and ease of use

As mentioned, the time it takes for companies to define their business trip, counting on accommodation reservations, flights, etc., is excessive. Therefore, if we acquire a technology that optimizes this task for us, it must be agile and accelerate this entire reservation process.

In addition, another problem that some companies may face is the adaptation of users to the new management tool or platform.

Therefore, in addition to the reservation process, the adaptation to the use of the new technology must be easy for all employees or users who are going to use it. A simple application or platform will make all processes related to trip planning faster.

8. All in the same portal.

All companies know (especially the department responsible for organizing trips) that the entire process of managing a single trip is very annoying.

You have to book hotels according to policies... book return flights... train tickets at the destination... in addition to obtaining an endless number of tickets, which must be presented by the traveler.

If we have the opportunity to have all this on the same platform and, therefore, be able to manage the entire process on the same portal, we can save ourselves a lot of headaches, as well as time.

9. Unlimited inventory

If we talk about travel management, there are requirements that must be basic to consider a platform as a useful tool.

One of them is the inventory of accommodations and flights. If a system does not have low-cost hotel lines, it can mean a loss of savings for the company.

Many companies may have in their travel policies the rule of choosing to save as much as possible on their business trips, so it would be advisable for the system to have this type of accommodation available.

In addition, it would be counterproductive to hire a tool with a limited inventory of hotels and flights, since we would not have access to travel to different areas of the world.

10. No commitment to permanence

Any travel system should allow the user or company to be able to terminate the contract without any problems.

When you are going to hire this type of service, it is advisable to test their functions through free demonstrations.

This tool will bring a great positive change for the company and its employees when it comes to traveling. However, you should analyze the benefits it can bring and see if this service is really suitable for the entire team.

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