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Richard Moss
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03.01.17
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26.11.18
Tips to Improve Travel Compliance and Protect Against Rogue Travellers
If you have employees booking outside of your travel policy or without your travel management company, you have ROGUE travellers! Improving compliance to your travel policies can save you time, money, and peace of mind down the road (literally).
Here are our top tips to improve compliance and keep your employees from going rogue:
Offer loyalty points and incentives with your travel program and communicate them clearly in your policies. Employees are much more likely to comply if they know they can earn their own; airline miles, gift cards, or other points through your policy. They can reap the rewards of business travel and use their incentives for personal trips in the future.
Employee health and safety is a huge concern for business travel. Be sure to communicate that keeping track of people in case of emergencies is critical and sharing itineraries is important. If travel plans need to change because of weather, flight delays, or other unexpected changes of plan, your policy can also protect against penalties and charges and ensure smooth re-booking and adjustments for your employees.
The team will be more likely to adhere to your policies if every itinerary must be pre-approved by management. This means itineraries must be reviewed, and rogue travellers will be punished. You can refuse to reimburse for rogue travel that goes against company policies/preferred booking channels. In contrast, you can reward prudent travel planners with shares of the cost savings they create for the company when using the preferred policy.
Using a professional travel management company can help your employees book their travel with ease. They won’t bother with online travel agencies or crazy itinerary building themselves. Pick a policy that delivers concierge level care to your employees and offers a 24 hours a day support system for changes and urgent requests. The easier you make it, the higher travel compliance will be.
For more tips on, check out our other business travel blogs, click here.
Creative Resins has been at the forefront of decorative glass technology for over 30 years. When Louise contacted us to help with a trip to Oman, we discovered that the company had been using an airline’s website to book direct, paying in excess of £5,000 per trip in Business Class. Using our negotiated fares on this one flight YourTravel saved over £1000 per trip. Upon further investigation and a year’s great relationship, we delved into the companies travel policies and booking habits. We found that travel was often booked at the last minute and there was no one in authority to keep a watchful eye over what was being booked and where. We then worked with Louise to create passenger profiles for all of Creative Resins travellers including details such as preferred seat numbers, meals and airlines – we also set in place cabin restrictions (who can and can’t travel in an upgraded travel class). We then looked at the company’s calendar for the coming year, estimating when and where they would need to book travel and agreed that Your Travel would be proactive in trying to get confirmed travel dates from 4 weeks prior to the trip dates. This created a stress-free booking system that took budget and organisational pressure from the senior management, knowing they would always be working with a cost-effective travel budget. This lead to a reduced travel spend of just over 16% without cost-cutting and maintaining a high level of service.
‘’Working with Your Travel Corporate has been an enlightening experience, we were wasting money on travel and working with John and the team was very easy indeed. Everything is taken care of on every trip and we get a level of service that just can’t be achieved by the bigger travel agents, being treated as a valued client and not just another customer is fantastic!’’ Louise Bollom, Director
