How to be a Corporate Travel Planning Expert?

Enterprises from various industries have been investing more in business travel after the COVID-19 reopening. But most entrepreneurs and decision-makers find it challenging to manage business travel needs efficiently due to lack of experience and expertise.

Many organizations these days recruit corporate travel planning experts to overcome these constraints by leveraging their inside industry knowledge. The insider knowledge makes them experts in improving employees’ work travel experience and controlling business travel expenses simultaneously.

As a corporate travel planning expert, you have to perform the responsibilities of professional travel agents. But your primary responsibility will remain to plan and organize business trips for employees. You will help work travelers book flights, accommodations, car rentals, and similar business travel products.

At the same time, you need to ensure that the business travel products are booked according to the business travel policy and budget set by the company. Hence, you can become a corporate travel planning expert by following some of the best practices implemented by fast-growing travel agencies.

10 Best Practices to Master the Art of Corporate Travel Planning

1. Define Travel Request Management Procedure

You have to start planning business trips after receiving travel requests from employees. Hence, you must clearly define the procedure for managing travel requests. The employees should send travel requests in a specific way. 

Also, they must share important information like travel destination, travel date, preferred airline, hotel, and ground transportation in a business travel request form.

2. Create Business Traveler Profiles

You can speed up corporate travel planning by creating profiles of work travelers. The profile will help you save the traveler’s personal information like name, emergency contact details, passport number, passport expiry date, and frequent flier number. 

Also, the profile will help you create business travel itineraries based on the traveler’s dietary and transportation preferences while planning business trips.

3. Share Travel Itinerary Plans

Preparing employees for a business trip is an important aspect of corporate travel planning. You must provide the information required by employees by sharing travel itinerary plans.

You can create personalized travel itinerary plans using ready-to-use templates. But you must refine the template to ensure that every work traveler knows the flight times, hotel check-in and checkout time, meeting schedules, ground transportation schedules, and other vital information.

4. Expand Travel Inventory

Most business travelers these days want more choices and options. Instead of choosing a particular vendor or supplier, they want to compare many business travel products and services. 

You can meet this expectation of business travelers by expanding travel inventory through partnerships and negotiations. However, many business travel planning experts find it easier to expand travel inventory using the right travel management software.

5. Explore Ways to Reduce Rates

Organizations expect corporate travel planning experts to keep travel costs under control. You can reduce business travel expenses significantly by booking flights, accommodations, and car rentals at discounted rates. You can get discounted rates through partnerships and negotiations. Also, you can access business travel products and services at discounted rates through travel management companies.

6. Facilitate Self-Booking

Work travelers love the experience of booking their choice of business travel products and services. You can make it easier for each employee to book her choice of business travel products by making them access self-booking tools.

Many business travel management solutions these days come with built-in features to make employees compare and book business travel products according to the guidelines and budget set by the employer. 

7. Create Traveler Checklists

Work travelers need a variety of accessories to remain active, comfortable, and safe during business trips. You should help travelers gather the right accessories according to the travel destination as part of the corporate travel planning process. 

It is important to create a personalized traveler checklist and share it with the employee to ensure that she does not forget these essential business travel accessories.

8. Ensure Constant Support

While planning corporate travel after the COVID-19 pandemic, you have to focus extensively on keeping work travelers safe and stress-free. You need to ensure that businesses maintain constant contact with business travelers throughout the business trip. 

Likewise, you should help business travelers handle last-minute changes and unforeseen incidents by enabling access to a duty of care.

9. Facilitate Data-Driven Decision-Making

Digitization creates opportunities for businesses to collect employee travel data regularly. They can analyze a large amount of travel data to get actionable insights. The insights help them to control business travel expenses and meet business travelers’ needs by making data-driven decisions.

Many organizations these days expect corporate travel planning experts to share actionable insights by analyzing large volumes of employee travel data. You can use analytics to analyze large data sets without putting in extra time and effort. Some of the best travel management software comes with built-in data analytics.

10. Leverage Corporate Travel Planning Tools

You can simplify and streamline corporate travel planning using a slew of software solutions. Some of these travel management software applications support both self-travel booking and managed travel booking while enabling access to a large travel inventory and providing discounted rates.

At the same time, there are several software applications that speed up business travel expense processing. Most travel management solutions come with features for employees and travel managers. You can invest in the right software to boost your efficiency.

Conclusion

The professional responsibilities of corporate travel planning experts will evolve in the post-pandemic age. But corporate travel management automation creates opportunities for work travelers to become corporate travel planning experts.

Many work travelers these days master the art of corporate travel planning by using one of the best travel management software implemented by their employers. They use the self-booking tools provided by the software to book business travel products at discounted rates.

Also, the software allows them to choose from a wide range of travel products and services according to preset travel policy and budget. At the same time, the expense management tools provided by the software speed up travel expense reimbursements without incidents of travel policy violations and travel expense fraud.