Based on a recent industry report, we will witness an increase in business travel costs throughout 2023. The surge in travel costs is a call to reevaluate how we manage business travel overall, and a strong start would be looking into the data you already have from your travel management system.
On the other hand, business travel hasn’t lost any of its value. The last couple of years has shown us that face-to-face relationships are more important than ever. It’s almost impossible to replace the trust and collaboration that can be forged when two parties meet in person. Now it’s the time for companies to revitalise relationships with global partners and clients and look for new customers to target.
One way to offset the rise in business travel costs without limiting the number of trips is implementing an effective and integrated travel management system, that is, an effective solution for organisations to track and manage their travel expenses, as well as automate business travel processes. With such a system in place, companies can streamline their travel operations, optimise their budget, and gain powerful insights from their travel data, allowing them to make data-driven decisions regarding their business trips.
In this article, we will illustrate how business travel solutions like TruTrip can help you obtain significant savings and positively impact your travel and expense management.
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TruTrip’s provided data can help provide helpful insights on the average cost of flights, accommodation services and other expenses related to your business trip.
This feature allows you to get an accurate picture of what your average spend is compared to what it should be. This is a process known as benchmarking, and it’s an effective way for corporate travel managers to identify areas where they can reduce costs by allocating resources more effectively and making better travel management decisions.
Travel managers can then use actionable insights provided by TruTrip to create customised policies for different trips, individuals or teams and set spending limits in a way that allows you to cut costs significantly without reducing the effectiveness of your business travel operations.
Through its travel label feature TruTrip, you can obtain more accurate forecasts and allocate your budget in smarter ways. You can put a label on flights, hotels and meeting rooms booked according to the event, or conference.
You will be able to know which types of travel, departments and travel scopes weigh more on your finances and use this information to find the most affordable ways to reach your travel management goals.
Tools like these are vital to containing costs when prices are rising and can give you a significant edge over those competitors that don’t take advantage of a similar travel management system.
TruTrip also allows you to create custom budget reports to compare your actual spending against the allocated budget, making it easier for you to adjust your strategy and identify opportunities to save money.
With TruTrip, you can conveniently use your detailed travel history to check which months have the most trips, annual events, business meetings or conferences. You can then integrate this information with other data to identify the best time to book flights, hotels and other services. The same data can be used to find out which destinations are the most frequent in certain parts of the year and identify potential travel hazards and weather-related risks.
Using corporate management travel companies like the TruTrip platform, you can access detailed reports on past trips to see what times of year are busiest for your company’s diverse travel needs. You can also view trends in spending and analyse where costs may be reduced. This allows you to better prepare for upcoming trips and ensure you’re getting the best value for your money.
TruTrip also provides insights into global events that could affect your travel plans. It also allows you to track safety risks for each destination, thus ensuring that travel preparation is done in a way that puts your travellers’ well-being first.
Another great feature of TruTrip is the possibility of filtering out hotel and flight travel spending to see where the most money is spent. This helps identify areas where you could achieve significant savings by negotiating better rates with suppliers.
When you spend a lot each year on services provided by a specific supplier, you usually hold more negotiating power than those who only purchase services from that supplier a few times a year. This is why you should use the insights available on TruTrip to identify areas where you can do more negotiations and get better deals.
In conclusion, an integrated and specialised travel management system like TruTrip can help you boost your business expense management and save money on business trips by providing useful, actionable insights into areas where costs can be reduced.
Its features range from budget forecasting and allocation to tracking data related to past trips and global events that could affect your travel plans and identifying areas where you can do negotiation talks. You can see these features in action by booking a demo or registering for a free trial.
TruTrip streamlines booking, management, and reporting for hassle-free business trips.