Business travel has become the new norm for every multinational corporate business. There is a visible shift in corporate travel, with an increase in the number of business trips being organized by every company. In such scenarios, a good business travel management system must be set in place to help reduce the stress involved in planning and executing business trips.
With the world economies interlinked, business travel has become a highlight. For new HR leaders, business leaders and travel managers, business travel planning can turn quite overwhelming. When it comes to business travel, there are many details involved. From a strong hand on paperwork to flight bookings and hotel bookings to setting allowances and keeping track of employees in international destinations, the list just goes on.
In such circumstances, business travel management comes to the rescue. Travel management is a corporate travel firm that helps with bookings, cost control, risk management, handling a large portion of the company’s budget and post planning. The whole process can be confusing. So here is a quick travel management guide with terms every travel manager should be aware of to understand the world of corporate travel management.
In this article, we'll take a look at:
Corporate Travel Management (CTM) supports OBTs that enhance end-user experience by understanding the CTMs’ proprietary technology framework. They differ from other online booking websites in that, they offer unique product customizations with enhanced product features with higher speed and lower costs. They save time, and money, and offer a personalized experience, traveller tracking, risk alerts and consolidated reporting.
This is in compliance with a self-booking tool (SBT), where employees expect their TMC to provide them with self-booking freedom to control costs.
Automation is everywhere. In communication, work environment, lifestyle, and learning. Automation is an essential aspect of a CTM as it helps reduce paperwork, easy integration and synching of payment, expenses, billing, and claims, and increases safety by setting automated risk alerts
Policy-regulated bookings can increase flexibility to a great level. Companies can automate their travel policy and only show pre-approved options to the bookings. Here, different sets of employees see different policies set by HR managers. Targeting becomes easier.
This is a person or a group of people whose job is to make needful travel arrangements for end clients on behalf of suppliers (hotels, car rentals, railways, etc). They simplify the travel planning process.
Travel suppliers are hotels, car or bike rental services, railways, travel insurance, and package tour companies.
A TMC is a business travel agency whose sole purpose is to simplify business travel for big corporate companies. A TMC helps in making bookings, carries the duty of care, and helps in saving overall costs potentially.
This is a corporate company’s moral and legal obligation to take care of their employees, and ensure their safety when they travel to different destinations to carry out business operations.
They help organizations to anticipate the potential impact of events, like the pandemic or any natural disaster and develop needful policies and mitigations to communicate anticipated risks to their travellers.
The TruCare dashboard on TruTrip is optimized such that the visibility is maintained at the highest possible levels. This way any business can be completely aware of their employee’s location and whereabouts.
This defines your level of control over your travels. This tool permits making post-booking changes in travel dates and making cancellations without any hassle. With Trutrip, the Flexi tickets offered by hotels and airlines are a new favourite for business travellers.
An NDC is a travel industry-supported program and a new way to source inventory from airlines. It bridges the gap between airlines and travel agents. It gives back a traveller’s precious time and creates the right offers based on individual users by offering the right inventory at the right time.
This is an expense management software used to automate and digitize expenses. It is an excellent way to reduce excess paperwork. You can easily automate, customize and streamline your travel finances. With the help of such software, you can synch transactions in real-time, control spending before it even happens, and influence a smarter spending culture with the help of unlimited virtual and physical cards.
This is all about creating value for money. The idea is the more you commit, the more bonuses you receive. A well-educated travel manager can avail of up to 40% discount values along with several benefits like room upgrades, airport transfers and more.
A co-working space is an arrangement where several people from different companies and backgrounds come together under one roof and carry out their business operations. This helps in cost saving and convenience through shared infrastructure and reduced expenses.
These are hotels that abide by environmentally-friendly policies. These hotels adopt green energy sources like solar power, rainwater harvesting, etc. to help minimize the degradation of the environment. Their ultimate goal is to be able to reduce the negative effects of their businesses on climate change and mother earth.
This is a way to measure an individual’s carbon footprint. The carbon footprint in business travel is a growing concern. In such situations, a good TMC helps track and ultimately reduce a business’s overall carbon footprint. These practices can help mitigate and achieve net-zero emissions in the long run.
MICE makes up for a large section of business travel, as every business requires event spaces to hold meetings and gatherings to bring colleagues and professionals together. This is also an important source of business for hotels as it helps increase room bookings and conference spaces. The MICE technology helps in building supplier networks, room block management, virtual event platforms, facial recognition, and more in case of virtual meetings.
Bleisure is a hybrid combination of business + leisure. With an increase in business travel, employees are looking at adding small elements of leisure to their business trips in order to make them more approachable and less boring.
The world today is all about greener travel trends. Purposeful travel tools and techniques help plan travels mindfully, like holding virtual meetings wherever necessary, prioritizing sustainable partners and suppliers like hotels and airlines that follow sustainable travel efforts, and choosing lower CO2 travel modes.
A good TMC can help you with all that is listed above and so much more. Their tools are built to reduce business and traveller stress and improve productivity. At TruTrip, along with making things safer and easier for businesses, sustainability is of prime importance.
At TruTrip we provide you with smart and thoughtful business travel solutions. Find the best travel management solution for you and your company. We’re always thinking of how we can make business travel better and easier for you. Book a demo or sign up for a free trial to see how TruTrip can take you places.
TruTrip streamlines booking, management, and reporting for hassle-free business trips.