Corporate Travel Strategies: Costs, Policies, Employee Experience

Business Travel: Effective Strategies for Corporate Trips

Managing business travel is complex. You’re balancing the expectations of your two primary stakeholders — travelers and the business — which often looks like: cost efficiency vs. flexibility, or traveler experience vs. risk. For travel managers, it can be frustrating to keep these priorities in check while still providing business travel services employees will love.

Employing a few key strategies can help travel managers meet these goals while improving efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing employee satisfaction.

Key Strategies for Managing Corporate Travel

Effective management of business travel starts with defining clear policies for your employees. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to deny an expense claim and deal with unhappy employees because the rules aren’t spelled out clearly.

So, let’s start there.

Clear Travel and Expense Policies

Establishing and maintaining clear travel policies helps employees know what is acceptable (and what’s not). They should include:

• Booking processes - Specify approved tools, preferred vendors, and advanced booking requirements.
• Expense guidelines - Define acceptable expenses, reporting deadlines, and documentation requirements.
• Approval workflows - Set clear authority levels for pre-trip approvals and budget caps.

Training and reinforcement will help here. A 2024 survey shows that despite knowing corporate policies, two-thirds of business travelers admit to deviating from company policies or completing non-compliant bookings.

“At the end of the day, we're here to put up guardrails to direct travelers and help them understand the value of the things we're asking them to buy,” said Buffy Garrier, Global Travel and Corporate Card Manager at Seagate.

Employees will usually embrace your approach if you clearly communicate the strategic  reasons for using the company booking tool. Focus especially on what benefits the traveler, particularly when it comes to duty of care. If employees don’t book through the corporate tool, the company may not be able to locate them in an emergency.

“You need to educate your employees and explain why you have corporate booking tools. "We’re educating all our stakeholders that safety is the number one priority for us – there’s a lot of risk when you book outside the system,” said Mina Salim, Travel Manager at Marel Group.

Get more insight into crafting corporate travel policies in our blog post, Master Policy-Making: Free Policy Templates for Travel, Expense, Invoice and Sustainability.

Data-Driven Decision-Making in Business Travel

You have a wealth of data at hand these days, so let’s put it to work for you. Leveraging analytics, you can:

• Track spending trends to identify cost-saving opportunities.
• Analyze traveler behavior to refine policies and optimize vendor agreements.
• Improve budget forecasts with predictive analytics, enabling better control over expenditures.

For example, data can uncover frequently traveled routes, enabling targeted negotiations with airlines.

Building Data Literacy

There’s certainly no shortage of data – and every company keeps generating more. The question is: How do you get a handle on it so you can use it to your advantage?

According to Peter Psaltakis, VP, Global Solutions Engineering, FCM Travel - SAP Concur TMC Partner, "It’s vital for you and every other travel leader to understand how data, data quality, data management, and analytics work in practice. You also want to know how to apply this knowledge to your travel program and where your travel data intersects with your organization’s wider goals."

Prioritizing Traveler Experience

If you have unhappy business travelers, it can affect morale and growth opportunities, as well as retention. Travelers understand the need to control costs, but are often frustrated by rigid policies that don’t take their comfort into account.

Corporate travel managers are employing several strategies to manage spend while also giving employees some flexibility, such as:

• Using corporate travel planning and booking tools that automatically adhere to policy limits while accommodating individual preferences, such as flight times or choice of accommodations
• Partnering with preferred vendors to provide added value or perks for business travelers

Business travelers are seeking more flexibility on their trips. Regularly soliciting feedback from employees is always a good idea. It demonstrates that you care about their business travel experience and can help you improve future trips. 

It can also help retain employees. “We need to make it feel as if they’re not restricted when they book. We’re in an extremely competitive labor market – if people are restricted, they’ll just move on to a competitor,” said Adam Hickingbotham, Category Manager (Travel and Office Services) at AtkinsRéalis.

Incorporating Sustainability in Corporate Travel Programs

46% of travel managers report that they have a strategy in place to monitor and assign “travel emission budgets” to teams and individuals, according to a Deloitte study. That’s more than a 50% increase from prior years. Consider using an corporate online booking platform that incorporates sustainability data to help guide business travelers when making decisions.

Employees want sustainable travel options, too, especially as younger generations enter the workforce. An SAP Concur survey shows that 27% of business travelers would be willing to decline a trip due to the environmental impact of the inability to choose sustainable options.

Mitigating Risk and Ensuring Traveler Safety

Corporate travel comes with inherent risks, particularly in high-risk regions or during global crises. 58% of employees say they’ve changed their mind about travel arrangements due to feeling unsafe.

Conducting pre-travel risk assessments to evaluate potential threats and incorporating travel alerts into itineraries can help ease concerns and allow for adjustments where necessary.

Travel managers should also maintain a comprehensive duty of care program that includes emergency contacts, after-hours support when needed, and other resources for business travel.

Managing Global Compliance and Policy Adherence

Managing cross-border travel policies for international bookings is considerably more complex, taking into account visas, tax regimens, local customs, and additional duty-of-care requirements. You need a centralized way to track international travel, including managing visa expirations, work permits, and entry restrictions that could disrupt work.

For enterprises with frequent international travel, managing Value Added Tax (VAT) refunds and withholding tax obligations also becomes more critical.

Employing Automation and Technology in Corporate Travel Management

Leveraging modern travel booking and expense management technology can streamline enterprise travel programs and improve efficiency. Automated planning, approvals, and expense workflows can reduce the administrative burden and provide greater visibility into budgets and compliance. It also accelerates reimbursements, which can be a burden for travelers who aren’t part of a corporate card program and may be on the hook for thousands of dollars in expenses waiting to get paid.

An integrated platform for managing end-to-end travel workflows simplifies the entire process. Built-in compliance tools can flag non-compliant spend or potential fraud. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) estimates that organizations lose about 5% of revenue to occupational fraud each year, including items like mileage padding, fake expenses, unused airline tickets, and double-dipping.

You can learn more about strategies to combat fraud in our eBook, Preventing and Detecting Fraud During Economic Uncertainty.

Effective Strategies for Cost Optimization

As economic uncertainty rises and budgets tighten, cost control becomes more important than ever. Deloitte shows that 50% of travel managers say they’re seeing significant pricing pressure. Suppliers are taking a tougher negotiating stance compared to previous years.

Corporate travel managers are looking at strategies to overcome these challenges, such as consolidating vendors to achieve higher volume discounts and incorporating dynamic pricing tools to identify real-time discounts.

In addition, companies using an integrated travel and expense (T&E) platform see significant benefits:

• 26% increase in policy compliance
• 21% annual cost savings
• 10x more efficient in expense report processing
• 64% more invoices processed
• 20% annual savings

Trends to Watch

There are a couple of important trends to continue tracking as you optimize your corporate travel program.

Political changes in multiple countries and regions are causing shifts in policies and evolving restrictions, so it will be crucial to stay on top of any changes to avoid problems. As we’ve seen, things can shift rapidly, and you need to remain agile to accommodate unforeseen concerns.

We’re also seeing a rise in “bleisure travel,” enabling employees to combine business and leisure travel. This can be a great no-cost perk for employees as long as there are clear policies and a way to ensure policy adherence.

Managing Corporate Travel Efficiently

Effectively managing business travel at the enterprise level requires strategic planning, advanced tools, and a balance between cost control and traveler satisfaction. By adopting these strategies, travel managers can align corporate travel programs with broader organizational goals and keep everything in balance.

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