The evolution of travel technology has simplified the travel booking process. Nowadays, business travelers can book policy-compliant flights and hotels easily using a corporate travel booking platform.
A corporate travel booking platform, also called an employee travel booking tool, is a self-booking software travelers can use to make business travel booking system online. It makes finding policy-compliant flights and hotels easier for employees. Besides that, it helps companies collect travelers’ data and ensure their safety.
Let’s look at a few benefits of a corporate travel booking system and the features you should look for before investing in a new corporate employee travel booking tool.
13 Benefits of a Corporate Travel Booking Platform:
- Simplifies Booking
- Enhances Travel Personalization
- Enables Direct and Indirect Travel Cost Savings
- Maximizes Travelers’ Safety
- Ensures Better Travel Policy Compliance
- Streamlines Approval Workflow
- Provides 24/7 Support
- Facilitates Seamless Data Sharing
- Keeps Travelers’ Data Secure
- Grows With Your Company
- Aids Sustainable Business Travel
- Leverages Business Travel Analytics
- Manages Concierge Services
1. Simplifies Booking
The conventional business travel booking method involves employees going through various third-party business travel booking sites or using B2B consumer travel apps to find the right flight and hotel options. However, this method is highly tedious and wastes the employees’ precious time they could direct toward performing other job-related crucial tasks.
A business travel booking system can help simplify bookings by combining flight and hotel options into a single package. Therefore, your employees make all their travel and stay arrangements using a single software with just a few clicks.
2. Enhances Travel Personalization
Finding policy-compliant flight and hotel booking options according to their preferences can be challenging for your employees. For instance, employees might want to book a hotel closer to the workplace but may not be able to find any well-rated options within the policy limit at the desired location.
Therefore, they must compromise on staying near the workplace and book a policy-compliant hotel elsewhere. Having to give up on their preference can lead to them feeling dissatisfied.
A corporate travel booking system like ITILITE enhances personalization by studying employees’ booking patterns and using predictive analytics to recommend policy-compliant options based on past preferences. You can also configure and book employee preferred hotels. Moreover, your employees also get personalized alerts about upcoming trips so that they can make all the necessary preparations.
3. Enables Direct and Indirect Travel Cost Savings
Saving travel costs is essential for the company’s financial health. However, it involves multiple steps like finding cost-efficient flights, negotiate with hotels for the best deals and making the bookings far in advance.
A corporate travel booking platform can help you save travel costs that by facilitating direct and indirect savings. In terms of direct savings, it offers an extensive inventory of flights and hotels sourced from a Global Distribution System. Therefore, you can pick the most cost-efficient options available in the market.
In terms of indirect savings, some corporate booking tools offer business travel incentives to motivate employees who choose the most economical employee travel booking option. Such incentives increase the number of cost-efficient bookings, bringing down the company’s overall travel costs.
To estimate how much you can potentially save with the help of a travel booking platform, try using our savings calculator. Click here to access the calculator
4. Facilitates Seamless Data Sharing
Multiple departments in your company need to access the business travel booking sites and its data. Your travel managers need data to assess the efficiency of the corporate travel management process by measuring travel KPIs like policy violations.
The finance department needs the booking data to create a realistic travel budget. And the HR department needs the employee travel booking data for expense reimbursement. Hence, you need a solution that can integrate with all the corporate travel booking platforms these departments use.
Business travel booking system can aid seamless data sharing. It can easily integrate with third-party software applications like HRMS, ERP, and expense management software. The integration helps avoid silos and facilitates the smooth flow of booking data across departments.
5. Ensures Better Travel Policy Compliance
Frequent travel policy violations lead to overspending and impact your company’s bottom-line results. Hence, you must make necessary changes in the company’s travel booking process to increase policy compliance.
One of the primary reasons why employees make out-of-policy bookings is that the guidelines are generalized and challenging to understand. Another reason behind violations is that the employees can’t view the policy in real-time to ensure the booking is within the limit.
A corporate travel booking system can help you ensure better policy compliance. You can configure multi-level granular policies according to departments, employee levels, trip destinations and duration, airlines, etc.
Such detailed guidelines will help employees know how much they can spend on bookings. They won’t have to spend time reading and interpreting the policy over and over. Moreover, they can also view the policy in real-time while booking to avoid violations.
6. Streamlines Approval Workflow
Creating a crystal-clear travel and expense approval workflow is essential to avoid unnecessary delays in corporate travel booking. However, most companies have a complex approval system with ambiguous touchpoints.
The problem intensifies in the case of international travel because it requires multiple approvers. If the request lands on the wrong table, it can get lost among other paperwork. Therefore, you must ensure that your travel request approval workflow is straightforward and streamlined.
A corporate booking tool can help you streamline the approval workflow. The software allows you to create a multi-layered approval mechanism according to parameters like employee level, domestic or international trip type, and trip duration.
After you set the approval system, all the trip requests will automatically move between various approvers. Moreover, the software also alerts the approvers in real-time to prevent approval delays.
Are you in doubt about the current status of your organization’s T&E processes/systems and think that an automated corporate booking tool is what you need? Click below to check your present T&E health using our calculator and know where you stand.
7. Provides 24/7 Support
International travel can be daunting for your employees. They must deal with different time zones, cuisines, and weather conditions and navigate unknown routes.
Amidst all chaos, sometimes they might find themselves stuck in an emergency. Handling all this without a helping hand can cause frustration and leave your employees dissatisfied. Hence, you must ensure they get extensive support whenever required.
A tech-forward business travel management platform like ITILITE can provide your employees with 24/7 support. They can reach out to the solution provider’s support team via multiple channels like calls, chats, and emails and get the required help.
Here is an overview of ITILITE’s state-of-the-art support.
To experience the support first-hand and learn more about how it has been beneficial for business travelers, talk to our solutions experts now.
8. Maximizes Travelers’ Safety
Travelers’ safety has taken center stage in all the c-suite conversations surrounding business travel. The new generation of road warrior employees prioritizes safety. They seek better travel risk management and real-time updates during all the stages of their business trip. Therefore, as an employer, you must go above and beyond the duty of care to ensure travelers’ safety.
A technologically forward business travel booking system can help you take travelers’ safety to the next level. You can get features that enable red-flagging unsafe accommodations, providing real-time risk alerts to employees and live-tracking their location to offer immediate emergency support .
9. Keeps Travelers’ Data SecureÂ
Travel booking data contains PII (Personally Identifiable Information) like employee IDs and credit card details. Any leakages and compromises can jeopardize your company’s and employees’ integrity. Hence, you must safeguard all this information with the best possible data security solution.
A SaaS-based corporate travel booking tool can be your organization’s perfect data security solution. Cloud security uses robust infrastructure to safeguard data. Firstly, the servers are stored in highly secure data centers that no one can access without prior permission.
Secondly, the data is encrypted with advanced encryption algorithms that make it extremely challenging for any cybercriminal to hack. Hence, you can be sure about the safety of sensitive information.
10. Grows with your Company
As your organization grows, the number of employees traveling for business will also increase. Therefore, you need business travel management software that can accommodate all the additional booking requests and store vast amounts of employee data without additional costs.
A cloud-based business travel booking platform grows with your organization. The software is scalable on demand without any additional costs. So, you can add unlimited users, store all the data and manage bookings effortlessly.
11. Aids Sustainable Business Travel
Sustainability in business travel is no longer just a buzzword. According to a study, business travel is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions. Therefore, it is time for companies to step up their environment protection game and practice sustainable business travel. The first step toward sustainable travel is analyzing and reducing your carbon footprint.
You can use a business travel booking platform to bring sustainability to business travel. Some platforms offer a carbon footprint tracker that can detect the emission levels on every trip. You can use this data to change your travel process and encourage eco-friendly corporate travel booking in your organization.
12. Leverages Business Travel Analytics
Analyzing your company’s travel booking data can help you gain crucial insights into employees travel spending. You can learn more about how early they book, which flights and hotels they prefer, who is spending the most on travel, and much more.
However, gaining insights into your travel data is not child’s play if you manage business travel through a traditional travel agency. In such cases, the data analysis process is manual, hence, highly time-consuming. Moreover, the quality of data insights solely relies on the travel agent’s expertise.
So how can you get good quality travel data intelligence quickly?
You can get that by managing travel through an automated corporate travel booking platform. A modern corporate booking tool summarizes your company’s travel booking data into customizable travel analytics dashboards and reports for better understanding.
Additionally, some corporate travel booking platform also deploy a virtual travel consultant to provide you with data-driven actionable insights. These insights can help you optimize your travel process and save costs.
13. Manages Concierge Services
Company travel booking majorly comprises booking flights and hotels. However, sometimes travelers might require additional services, also known as concierge services, to ensure a seamless trip experience. Examples of concierge services include a visa for international travel. Or a cab to take them from the airport to their hotel.
Getting concierge services can be difficult if you manage business travel bookings through a traditional travel agency. Such agencies usually don’t accommodate additional service requests. Even if they do for some special client, they take a lot of time and multiple back-and-forth emails.
An easier way to manage concierge services is through business travel booking system. These platforms have in-built mechanisms where you can make additional requests with a few clicks. Moreover, the request can also be clubbed with flight and hotel booking making data management easier.
Hence, with a corporate booking tool, you can say goodbye to the hassle of unnecessary emails and manage concierge services easily.
Find the Right Corporate Travel Booking Platform
Investing in a corporate travel booking platform can help you enhance the efficiency of your corporate travel management company. Hence, you must invest in a modern corporate booking tool to ensure you get state-of-the-art features for employees and travel managers.
ITILITE’s SaaS-based business travel management software offers a lightning-quick business travel booking system, extensive travel inventory, 24/7 traveler support, advanced travel analytics, and much more.Â
Get a free demo to experience all the features first hand.Â
