Corporate travel strategy is not just about having a robust travel policy, it’s about how travel can support business goals. After all, a policy is just a set of rules, strategy is about making those rules work for you and your company. With rising travel spend, increased traveler expectations, leakages in compliance, safety and the need to meet certain sustainability measures, there’s never been a better time to strategize.
We’ll look at what corporate travel strategy is, the pillars of corporate travel strategy, and give you the building blocks so you’re ready and able to start making travel work for your company in order to achieve those goals.
What is a corporate travel strategy?
A corporate travel strategy is the systematic approach to planning, booking, controlling, and optimizing business travel. The goal is to balance cost control, compliance, traveler experience, and duty of care. It’s more than just logistics; it includes policy, tools, supplier approach, and measurement.
The pillars of a corporate travel strategy
A good corporate travel strategy is made up of guiding principles that can help guide you.
Cost
First things first, costs are one of the main pillars of a corporate travel strategy. Making sure you find ways to implement budget control, take advantage of negotiated rates, and avoid budget loss is fundamental to managing expenses.
Compliance
Compliance is about finding ways to improve policy adoption, in-tool booking, and approvals so that you keep on budget.
Convenience
Convenience is about the traveler experience, having frictionless booking and support will help ensure the travel experience is seamless, avoiding any budget issues in the long run.
Duty of care
Making sure travelers are safe and you live up to your duty of care involves looking out for traveler safety with tracking mechanisms that allow travelers to notify that they have safely arrived and that emergency support is available should they need it.
Sustainability
Sustainability is an important part of a corporate travel strategy as more and more companies seek to make travel decisions that favor the environment (think train vs. plane). As sustainability reporting makes its way into legislation across Europe, it’s key for businesses to have strategies around sustainability.
Actionable corporate travel strategy insights
Now that we’ve looked at the pillars of a corporate travel strategy, let’s break this down into components people can turn into action:
Goals & travel purpose
Make sure you define what travel is for, i.e., what is the end goal? Common travel purposes could be sales growth, customer success, internal collaboration or events. Define when it’s worth it to travel vs. when going virtual is a better bet.
Governance & stakeholders
Define who owns what. For example, who’s in charge of Travel/Operations, Finance, HR/People, Security/Risk, and answering to frequent travelers’ questions. In a small company, these lines might be a little blurred, and there might not necessarily be someone in charge of travel. This is why, in any case, whether you have a big or small company, it’s important to know who will respond to what, and make decisions accordingly about rules and exceptions.
Policy design
Then there comes arguably the most important of a travel program: the travel & expense policy. This is where you define booking rules, preferred vendors, expense guidelines, and approval processes. A robust travel policy should be at the heart of any corporate travel strategy.
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Program & tools
Central booking adoption is essential. This means having a travel and expense platform like GetGoing with an integrated expense flow where you can gain visibility into spend patterns. You also want to have a tool that has built-in reporting to better understand and make educated decisions around travel and expense.
Corporate travel strategy KPIs
Being able to measure what is working for you and what isn’t is also key. This is why having some Key Performance Metrics in place is essential. Here are some travel management KPIs that will help you understand and better measure if your strategy is working for your company.
5 Steps to create a corporate travel strategy
1. Have a baseline for current travel and know your pain points
Pain points could be spend, leakage, traveler feedback. Having this information will help you better craft your strategy.
2. Define goals and pillars
See pillars above to help you start making your goals.
3. Align stakeholders and decision-making
Make sure all groups affected by corporate travel share the same goals and priorities and at the same time define how corporate travel is managed, controlled, and enforced.
4. Keep your travel policy alive and active
Make sure your policy works for you and is updated to reflect your company’s needs at any given time.
5. Track KPIs
Track KPIs and update the strategy quarterly to ensure compliance and stay on budget.
By having a strategy in place, you can be sure all departments across the company are aligned, and you have the system in place to ensure adoption and measurement of how well the program is performing.