Business travel is undeniably back. After the financial downturn of 2008 and the unprecedented standstill caused by the recent pandemic, companies are once again sending their teams on the road. This resurgence highlights a persistent challenge: the often cumbersome process of Business Travel Booking. While the world has changed, the old, inefficient methods for arranging corporate travel remain a pain point for many organizations.
For companies still relying on outdated approaches – expecting employees to decipher complex travel policies, hunt for budget-friendly flights and accommodations, book independently using personal or company cards, and then painstakingly compile expense reports – the struggle is real. This traditional way is not only time-consuming and frustrating for employees but also lacks the visibility and control that finance teams need.
Fortunately, the solution lies in embracing modern technology. A suite of innovative tools is available to automate, centralize, and effectively manage every aspect of business travel booking. These digital solutions are significantly more efficient and user-friendly than manual processes, offering a streamlined experience for both travelers and administrators.
Unlock Efficiency: Essential Tools for Business Travel Booking and Management
For many employees, the complexities of business travel begin right at the booking stage. While they understand their destination and trip duration, navigating the ‘how’ of booking can be daunting. Companies typically address this in one of two ways:
- Designating a company travel buyer or administrative/finance team member to handle all bookings.
- Empowering employees to book their own travel, guided by clear travel policies and instructions.
While the first option offers control, it can be bottleneck and lack flexibility. The latter, self-booking approach, is increasingly preferred by business travelers, with nearly half desiring the autonomy to manage their own arrangements. However, this autonomy must be balanced with the need for oversight and accurate record-keeping.
The following tools are designed to make business travel booking more seamless and efficient, empowering employees while maintaining company control and visibility.
1. TravelPerk
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Alt Text: TravelPerk platform interface showcasing a user-friendly dashboard for business travel booking, highlighting its centralized booking system for flights, hotels, and other travel services.
The sheer volume of options available online for flights and accommodations, while usually welcome, can become overwhelming when booking business travel. Employees often waste valuable time navigating multiple websites, attempting to find the best options within company budget constraints and travel policies. This process can be inefficient and lead to frustration.
TravelPerk addresses this challenge by consolidating the world’s largest travel inventory into a single, user-friendly platform. Mirroring the convenience of personal travel booking sites, TravelPerk integrates a vast selection of airlines, hotels, trains, and car rentals into its intuitive dashboard and mobile app. This centralized approach eliminates the need for employees to jump between multiple platforms, significantly simplifying the business travel booking experience.
For finance teams, TravelPerk offers even more compelling advantages. By centralizing all company travel bookings in one place, tracking expenses and generating reports becomes remarkably straightforward. Unlike consumer travel websites, TravelPerk is specifically designed for business needs, understanding the crucial record-keeping requirements of corporate travel. The platform provides clear visibility into who booked which trip, when, and for what purpose, streamlining expense management and reporting.
The integration between TravelPerk and Spendesk further enhances efficiency by:
- Automating invoice synchronization: Eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors.
- Streamlining approval workflows: Preventing duplicate bookings and ensuring policy compliance.
- Facilitating accounting processes: Enabling the export of detailed journal entries directly into accounting software.
This powerful integration empowers finance teams to grant employees autonomy in business travel booking while maintaining robust control and comprehensive visibility over all travel-related expenditures.
2. Airbnb for Work
Airbnb for Work offers a unique approach to corporate accommodation, extending beyond traditional hotels to include a diverse range of properties suitable for business travelers. While it shares similarities with the consumer version of Airbnb, several key features are tailored specifically for business needs.
Key differentiators of Airbnb for Work include:
- Company-linked bookings: Travel arrangements are directly connected to the company profile, simplifying invoice processing and eliminating the need for employees to submit individual expense reports for accommodation. Finance teams gain direct access to booking details and invoices.
- Beyond overnight stays: Airbnb for Work extends beyond accommodation to include bookable spaces for meetings, conferences, and even temporary office spaces, providing versatile solutions for various business travel needs.
- Airbnb Experiences for team building: The platform also integrates Airbnb Experiences, facilitating the discovery and booking of team-building activities, ideal for group business trips and corporate retreats.
Ashley Schmitz, Regional Lead Executive Assistant for Campari America, highlights the platform’s value: “With the dashboard, we can view where all of our employees are traveling and where they are staying, as well as the average rate that we are spending and the cost savings that we have every year.”
For companies already comfortable with Airbnb for personal travel, Airbnb for Work offers a seamless transition to corporate business travel booking, retaining the familiar platform while adding essential features for business travel management and expense tracking.
3. TravelBank
TravelBank, similar to TravelPerk, provides a centralized platform for employees to manage all aspects of their business travel booking in one place. From initial trip planning and booking to expense tracking and reporting, TravelBank streamlines the entire process. This centralized approach offers significant benefits, particularly in simplifying the booking and payment process for employees.
However, TravelBank distinguishes itself with its robust expense reporting functionalities. Users can easily capture receipts for flights, ground transportation, and other expenses by simply taking screenshots. The platform then intelligently matches these receipts to charges on company cards, automating a significant portion of the often-dreaded expense report process.
This automation greatly simplifies expense management, a traditionally cumbersome task for both employees and finance departments. By minimizing manual data entry and reconciliation, TravelBank saves time and reduces the potential for errors in expense reporting.
An innovative feature of TravelBank is its rewards program. Instead of simply adhering to maximum travel budgets, employees are incentivized to find cost-effective travel options. Travelers can earn personal rewards by securing discounts for the company, promoting responsible spending and aligning employee interests with company cost-saving goals.
4. Flightfox
Flightfox offers a unique blend of technology and human expertise in business travel booking. For companies not ready to completely abandon the personalized service of traditional travel agents, Flightfox provides a compelling alternative. The platform leverages a network of experienced travel experts to assist travelers in securing optimal travel arrangements tailored to their specific needs.
Unlike traditional travel agencies that require in-person visits, Flightfox operates entirely online. Users simply input their travel requirements and preferences online, and Flightfox’s team of experts takes over, searching for the best flight and hotel options.
Flightfox emphasizes transparency in its fee structure and focuses on delivering genuine value to its clients. Their manifesto highlights their commitment to simplifying complex business travel booking through expert assistance and transparent pricing.
User reviews consistently praise Flightfox for its exceptional service and ability to secure deals that are often missed by individual travelers. While many flight and hotel deals are available online, the most advantageous ones are often short-lived and difficult to find and book manually. Flightfox’s experts constantly monitor travel deals, providing access to exclusive offers and ensuring travelers get the best possible value.
Flightfox effectively brings the expertise of traditional travel agents into the digital age, offering personalized assistance and access to exclusive deals in a convenient online format.
Tools to Optimize Business Travel Spending
Beyond the initial booking process, managing and controlling business travel spending presents another significant challenge for companies. Travel expenses often involve a complex mix of payment methods, including company cards, invoices, wire transfers for larger expenses, and employee reimbursements for out-of-pocket costs.
Tracking each of these payments, allocating them to the correct individuals and departments, and staying within budget requires meticulous management. Without the aid of specialized tools, maintaining control over business travel spending can be an overwhelming task.
The following tools are designed to simplify travel expense management, providing greater visibility and control over who is spending what, where, and when.
5. Spendesk
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Alt Text: Spendesk platform showcasing virtual and physical company cards for business travel expenses, emphasizing real-time spending tracking and user-specific payment methods.
Spendesk revolutionizes how teams pay for business travel expenses. Whether it’s booking flights online, paying for hotels upon arrival, or purchasing incidentals during a trip, Spendesk ensures all travel-related spending is accurately logged and attributed to the correct event and user.
Traditional expense management often struggles to connect disparate travel expenses to a single trip and user. For example, flights booked online with a company card in advance may be difficult to link with hotel expenses paid by the employee weeks later using their personal card.
Spendesk overcomes this challenge by providing diverse payment methods all linked to individual users. Employees can utilize virtual credit cards for online bookings and physical prepaid expense cards for on-the-road expenses. Both payment methods are assigned to the individual employee, providing clear accountability and eliminating ambiguity about who is spending company funds.
For out-of-pocket expenses, Spendesk simplifies expense reporting. Employees can easily generate expense reports and link them to their user profile, ensuring all spending is consolidated and accurately tracked.
The real-time expense tracking capabilities of Spendesk provide finance teams with up-to-the-minute visibility into business travel spending. This contrasts sharply with traditional expense reporting, where spending is often reviewed only at the end of the month when expense reports are submitted. Real-time visibility enables proactive budget management and allows for timely intervention if spending deviates from planned budgets.
Spendesk is a robust solution for companies prioritizing secure, controlled, and transparent business travel spending management.
6. Spendee
For businesses seeking a less comprehensive solution than a dedicated business expense management platform, Spendee offers a practical alternative. This user-friendly mobile app enables real-time expense tracking and receipt capture, making it an excellent tool for individual employees to manage their spending while traveling for work.
While not specifically designed for business use, Spendee is easily adaptable for corporate travel expense management. Traveling employees can utilize the app to meticulously track all expenses, both large and small, ensuring no expenditure is overlooked. The app’s real-time tracking and receipt attachment features promote accurate and timely record-keeping.
Furthermore, Spendee allows users to grant access to their accounts to managers or finance team members, providing companies with visibility into employee travel expenses without requiring a full-scale enterprise expense management system. This feature enables basic oversight and expense monitoring for smaller businesses or teams.
Additional Tools to Enhance the Business Travel Experience
While booking and expense management are typically the most significant pain points in business travel, several other tools and services can further streamline the travel experience for employees and improve overall efficiency.
Here are a few noteworthy extras:
7. TripIt
TripIt serves as a digital travel itinerary organizer. Users simply forward their travel confirmation emails to TripIt, and the platform automatically compiles a comprehensive itinerary accessible via smartphone or computer, regardless of location.
TripIt enhances itinerary management by providing maps and directions to navigate between locations. The premium TripIt Pro version includes additional features like a Seat Tracker to help users select optimal flight seating.
With a free version available, TripIt offers valuable itinerary management features for all business travelers, simplifying travel logistics and ensuring easy access to essential travel information.
8. Google Travel
Google Travel, evolving from Google Trips, is a powerful trip planning and information aggregation platform. Staying true to Google’s core strength, Google Travel centralizes essential travel information in one easily accessible location.
Instead of navigating numerous websites, online brochures, and forums to research flights, hotels, activities, maps, and weather conditions, Google Travel consolidates all of this information into a single, user-friendly platform. It simplifies trip planning by providing a comprehensive overview of all travel-related details.
All information within Google Travel is seamlessly integrated with the user’s Google account. Confirmation emails sent to Gmail are automatically added to the itinerary, ensuring all travel plans are organized and readily accessible.
Google Travel also incorporates up-to-date Covid-19 travel information specific to the user’s destination, a crucial feature in the current travel landscape. While not exclusively designed for business travelers, Google Travel offers significant benefits to anyone seeking streamlined trip planning and centralized travel information management.
9. AirHelp
AirHelp empowers business travelers with knowledge of their air passenger rights. In the event of flight disruptions such as cancellations or significant delays, AirHelp informs travelers of their eligibility for compensation and guides them through the claims process.
Many business travelers are unaware of their passenger rights and potential compensation for flight disruptions. They may assume that flight cancellations or delays are simply unavoidable inconveniences, with the company bearing any associated costs.
AirHelp educates travelers about their rights and facilitates the process of claiming compensation from airlines. This not only benefits the traveler by potentially mitigating travel disruptions but also enables companies to recoup costs associated with flight delays and cancellations, positively impacting travel budgets.
By equipping teams with AirHelp, companies empower their employees to advocate for their rights and potentially recover costs associated with flight disruptions.
10. PackPoint
Forgetting essential items on personal vacations is often a minor inconvenience. However, overlooking critical items for a business trip can lead to significant disruptions and potentially impact professional obligations.
PackPoint is a smart packing list app designed to prevent forgotten items and ensure business travelers are fully prepared for their trips. The app assists users in creating comprehensive packing lists, taking into account factors such as destination weather, trip duration, and planned activities.
Users input trip details, including destination, travel dates, and planned activities, and PackPoint generates a customized packing list tailored to their specific needs. The app helps ensure travelers remember essential items like laptops, chargers, presentations, important documents, and other trip-critical necessities.
PackPoint provides peace of mind by ensuring business travelers are well-prepared for their trips, minimizing the risk of forgotten items and potential disruptions to work engagements.
Test Drive Business Travel Tools for Optimal Solutions
These ten tools represent a selection of effective solutions to streamline and enhance business travel booking and management. The next step is to evaluate these tools and determine which best align with your company’s specific needs and priorities.
When assessing these tools, consider the following key objectives:
- Empowering travelers with flexibility and choice: Select tools that provide employees with autonomy and control over their travel arrangements.
- Real-time tracking and management of spending: Prioritize tools offering up-to-the-minute visibility into travel expenditures.
- Maintaining finance team control and oversight: Ensure tools provide robust reporting and control mechanisms for finance departments.
- Maximizing time savings and efficiency: Opt for tools that automate processes and reduce manual administrative tasks.
Tools that effectively address these objectives are likely to be valuable assets in optimizing your company’s business travel booking processes and overall travel management strategy.
Happy travels!
