If you note down all the expenses that eat away at your business budget, there’s one that can easily get out control: employee travel.
The price of a business trip can fluctuate massively, depending on how it is budgeted.
This is because there are many different expenses involved in business travel. There’s the cost of a hotel room, flights, transport around the city, food, and drink, and so on. Yet you cannot simply go for the cheapest options in every category – that wouldn’t be conducive to keeping employee morale high.
As a result, it is a fine balancing act to get the budget right. Fortunately, the following four tips will assist with reducing employee travel expenses in an effective manner that works for everyone:
1. Is travel a necessity?
If there’s one way to reduce travel expenses, it’s for your employees to not go on the trip at all.
While specific business trips cannot be avoided, othersdon’t require the need to meet in-person. Due to advancements in technology, it’s easy to use a teleconferencing platform such as Google Hangouts or Zoom to talk with multiple people face-to-face – all without anyone needing to leave their respective offices.
In the same vein, there are also team collaboration tools available where employees, regardless of their location, can work in real-time on projects together.
2. Utilise the latest technology
As the previous point highlights, technology can make a massive difference to employee travel expenses. This theme continues by using specially designed travel management solutions.
By implementing this type of technology, you can keep track and optimise every aspect of each trip. For instance, your employees have the power to book their own travel arrangements with ease. You can also allocate them a set travel budget with virtual cards, and you can even analyse the entire process to better refine overall expenditure.
3. Book ahead of time
This isn’t possible on every occasion, as specific business trips will spring up without any warning. Nevertheless, planning ahead of time is one way to significantly reduce your travel budget.
With this in mind, it’s essential that, once they know a business trip is coming up, every employee puts in their travel requests ASAP. Simply booking a return flight in advance can help save hundreds of pounds compared to last-minute reservations. This is particularly the case when travelling during the high season and visiting a popular destination.
4. Negotiate with providers
It might seem like a futile approach to take, but you might be surprised at the number of providers who will be willing to offer your business an exclusive discount or reward programme of some kind.
Airlines, car rental companies, hotel chains – all of them desire your repeat business. Use this information to your advantage. If you state your business and employees will book exclusively with them when applicable, they will likely be willing to provide an incentive for you to do so. Even if it’s just 5% off the regular price, this can make a significant difference over time.
