Corporate Travel Planning: How to Cut down your Corporate Trip Expenses

Corporate travel is an ever-growing industry and is center stage in today’s business world. As companies increase their global reach, corporate travel is evolving to take center stage. Travel in various forms within and outside the companies are becoming a norm and increasing by the day. Travel industry itself increasing at a rate of more than 8% per year, the cost of travel is increasing at an equivalent rate. With a consistent growth in spending year on year, it’s important to evaluate the costs of business travel to your business, review travel policies, ensure you’re getting the best rates possible and minimize the amount of time you’re spending on the process. And it is at this stage the companies like Travoinspire play an important role in cutting down the cost while retaining the objectives of the travel and the standards.

When it comes to planning and booking corporate travel, there is no quick fix, and depending on who the responsibility falls to, it can often be time-consuming and confusing. However, with the right tools in place, advice from those in the know, and access to global fares and discounts, it need not be such a painful process but it will remain a time consuming one and diverting you from the important facets of your work.

Corporate travel has its own challenges in travel planning. Corporates more often reward their employees with travel to different destinations as a team or individually as a reward to complement the hard work. Planning for any type of travel involves fund allocation and most of the decision in terms of number and destination gets restricted on account of funds availability. More often than not the decision comes late and the planning is undertaken in a short planning cycle. This affects not only the budget but also extent of planning. There is a need for the decision makers to understand that- though it is important to expose people to group travel and fun to build that bonhomie but it is also important to undertake the planning in time to ensure that you accrue maximum benefit for the money that u invest. I m sure that’s the business buzz word.

Planning cycle of 6-8 months will cut down the cost by 30%. Fix your budget- remember allocation of budget in advance will ensure that you get value for money. Finalise your plan 6 months in advance. Air tickets are the biggest show spoilers due to dynamic pricing followed by most of the operators. Therefore, measures to control the cost will be the way to start planning for a corporate trip. So what should be the planning cycle:

• Define budget for the trip
• Assess the areas where you wish to go for the trip
• Once location is finalised, block the air ticket
• Now carry out detail assessment and planning for the trip, as there will be enough time to do that. Any addition can be undertaken.
• Visa processing needs to be started at an early stage as this will involve collation of documents and processing at various embassies.
• Decide on a timeline for achieving of various activities in a timely manner
• Conduct face to face meeting with the planning team for fine tuning of the plan.
• Remember it’s the fine-tuned plan that can live the test of time.

So, in nutshell PLAN WELL, PLAN EARLY and enjoy the benefits at a considerably lower cost.