In today’s fast-paced business landscape, efficient and hassle-free business travel is important to maintain a competitive edge. Travelling for business can be complicated. This is because it involves arrangements, booking tickets, and maintaining logistics.

The article discusses the best ways to streamline and prepare for business travel in 2024.

Let’s first understand the challenges to ensuring smooth travel.

Major obstacles to ensuring smooth business trips

Managing company travel is exhausting. Identifying the potential travel needs and analysing the best ways to reduce costs is strenuous. Here are some potential challenges to ensuring a smooth business trip:

• Not having a dedicated department to manage travel requests
• Long approval process
• Track expenses in check with multiple trips
• Delayed reimbursement
• Complying with the policy
• Ensuring employee’s safety

How do you smoothen up corporate business travel?

While booking a trip, a company encounters the above-mentioned challenges. The most difficult of them is – tracking expenses and adjusting them to different time zones. The best way to do so is by preparing for them. It implies that you must research your options, have a plan and ensure a backup. Here are some business challenges and tips to streamline these with the best solutions:

1)     Automate the company’s travel policy

Analysing the company’s policy related to business travel will help you understand the standards of everything. It prevents you from breaking the rules. Most companies share travel policies outlining the budget for tickets, accommodations and transport. Additionally, it lays out the booking partners that businesses reach out to for business travels.

However, some travel managers struggle to communicate it to the employees. They are often in jargon that is quite hard to understand by a layperson. It is the reason employees ignore the policies altogether.

Solution: Companies should have a dedicated and experienced travel manager who knows how to draft policy. Moreover, it should be language that is simple to understand. You can also use travel management software that helps to set up travel policies according to employees’ designation and trip duration.

2)     Track every business travel expense and claim automatically

One of the critical business travel challenges is- tracking the business travel expense. Every business traveller needs to keep receipts safely. It will help them reimburse them later.

However, employees often struggle to track their reimbursements due to – loss of receipts or expenses that do not fall within the travel policy. Budgeting becomes a problem when the person does not know the limit. Moreover, failure to report the receipts within the deadline impacts the claim.

Solution: Having expense tracking software for employees may be helpful. It should list the guidelines related to travel expense limits and deadlines to claim reimbursements. Moreover, it should send gentle reminders of the budget limit and deadline to claim the reimbursements. It thus streamlines the claim and reimbursement part. However, helps employees work according to the budget.

If any employee exceeds the budget or cannot claim anymore, he may check other ways to finance expenses. For example, facilities like unsecured loans with no credit check flexibility may help. It may help him finance critical expenses without wasting time. It is a feasible option if none of the debit cards work.

3)     Have a travel advisory for employees’ safety

Employees may face several threats during domestic and international trips. Moreover, around 84% of travellers are women. Ensuring proper safety standards is critical for any company.

Failing to track the best ways to ensure safety causes individuals to face repercussions.

Solution: Setting up a safe travel advisory may help you. It may be responsible for tracking the employee’s destination, the political strife (if any), health care facilities, and providing emergency numbers. Additionally, install software that helps track employee movement during the trip. It should happen with the person’s consent.

Apart from that, the authorities must analyse the safety from the women’s perspective. Check whether the place is safe for a woman. Women should try to blend their outfits with those of natives to avoid further threats. Issue a travel checklist for women travellers. It will help them take necessary measures accordingly.

4)     Automating the ticket booking process

One of the biggest challenges employees encounter while booking a travel ticket is the time of approval. Every employee needs the approval of the respective concerned person before booking tickets. However, delays in approval delay booking. Bookings are an elongated and time-consuming process. It thus requires the company to take the necessary steps in optimising the booking and approval process.

Solution: Having a business travel management system notifies the concerned person about your booking request. It eliminates the stress of writing multiple emails to the person regarding the same thing. It also allows an employee to change the booking request and update the concerned person. In this way, it helps you save time and effort.

5)     Ensuring a travel support facility

One of the significant business problems challenges employees face is getting travel support during a business trip. Employees taking business trips struggle with the transport, accommodations and document-related stuff. For example, what if a hotel assigns an employee the wrong room or receives a cab? Not having a proper solution in place can lead to inconvenience.

Solution: Companies can outsource business travel management to a travel management company. It will provide 24/7 support to employees through channels like- calls, texts and emails. Moreover, it also provides a dedicated travel manager to assist the employee with travel. It also ensures that the travel aligns with the company’s travel policies.

6)     Providing consistent health support

International or domestic travel poses health risks. Thus, if travelling abroad, the company must take preventive measures to ensure safe travel. They should take measures to reduce or prevent the chances of catching an infection. Additionally, employees may struggle to adjust to new weather and food in the new country.

Solution: Companies must provide a clear overview of the weather and infections. It will help employees to guard themselves against the same. Launch guidelines for safe travel for a particular country or place. Apart from that, providing health insurance covers some diseases and infections.

Sometimes, insurance does not suffice the costs. What if something happens in the new city or country? It requires the individual to have a financial plan. However, if you lack the finances to pay for the immediate but costly treatment, check 12-month loans for bad credit scores. Yes, some external financial facilities help you finance the expense despite a bad credit history.

Bottom line

No matter how often you travel for business or how well you think you have packed, business travel challenges may surprise you. Thus, both employees and companies should take necessary measures for smooth business travel. Identify the existing systems and business travel policies. Refresh it according to employee’s concerns. Additionally, leverage technological advancement to optimise the process.