A Comprehensive Guide by Travel Experts
Corporate travel is a simple enough idea, but it’s far more prominent than most people realize. You don’t need to board an airplane or stay in a hotel to be traveling for business. Any time an employee is traveling anywhere other than their home or their local worksite for anything work-related, it would be classified as corporate travel.
It may surprise you how many companies don’t have a travel policy or any real plan of action in place for making sure their travelers are safe when tragedy strikes, whether on a global or more localized scale. That goes double regarding a plan of action when it comes to purchasing air fare, cars and hotels. As an employer, it’s important to ensure you’re getting negotiated rates and also ensure your employees are aware of and utilizing them.
Thankfully, the experts at Travel Travel are here to share information on how to consolidate all that information from airlines, hotels, car rentals, traveler location and everything else into one place.
Things you should be considering for corporate travel:
- Do I have the best price available?
- Do you have any unused tickets?
- Make sure you have an advance purchase if possible (14 days prior, etc.)
- Make sure your company has a Corporate Travel Policy in place.
- Do you have negotiated/ preferred rates with airlines, car companies or specific hotels?
- Do you have the right Travel Management Company?
- Risk Management: Are your employees safe? Do you know their location?
- Do you have all the required documents? Such as REAL ID, Passport, Visa, etc.
- Make sure you’re aware of any COVID travel restrictions.
Incentive Travel
Tinggly conducted a survey and found that nearly all employees prefer rewards in the form of experiences rather than material things. In fact, one thousand American workers were polled, and 90% said they’d like to receive a gift in the form of an experience from their employers, such as a weekend getaway, a fishing trip, a sporting event or a concert.
Of those polled, there were other interesting findings in that study:
- 45% are ready to try something out of their comfort zone
- 59% said they’d go skydiving if the experience was given to them
- 30% adding they’d never do this on their own
- 66% said they’d enjoy receiving experience as a thankyou for a job well done
There is a belief that COVID helped push this shift in attitude, but there had been surveys done long before it that would back up these claims. What it most certainly has impacted, though, is the ability of companies to find and/or retain employees. Offering incentive travel can certainly help with that.
Corporate Incentive Trips
Corporate incentive trips aim to boost employee performance and engagement while driving business goals. Incentive trips have been proven to engage and motivate employees over the long haul. Specific goals are almost always tied to an increase in sales or purchases. It also improves profitability and productivity, promotes teamwork and rewards the best.
3 Travel Topics Every Company Should Be Discussing
Duty of Care
Duty of care is a topic that every company should be discussing, and that goes double for those that do business travel. “Duty of care” is the legal and moral responsibility of a company to make sure that their employees are safe, especially when those employees are being sent far from home on business. From a travel management company’s perspective, that means making sure all of our accounts at Travel Travel have the tools required to know where each and every one of their employees are when they’re traveling for work, knowing risks and dangers of each destination their employees are traveling for work and the knowledge and means necessary to relocate their employees from a danger zone to safety on a moment’s notice.
As I mentioned before, not taking this responsibility seriously can have legal ramifications for the employer, but more importantly, it can have much scarier ramifications for the travelers and their loved ones. COVID only served to exacerbate the issue, as we all know it can be a major liability sending employees through airports and everything else in a pandemic. For instance, one of our “duty of care” services has now implemented a tool that shows all COVID hotspots, so you can make your decisions with that information readily at your fingertips.
Unused Ticket Management
- Identifies and keeps track of any unused tickets
- Automatically queries for open or unused tickets
- Routinely checks and logs status (exchanged, canceled or refunded ticket)
- Emails traveler/company contact of approaching deadlines for ticket use
- Creates real-time reports
- Translates to cost savings
Online Booking Tools
Online booking tools (OBT) are incredible. Everyone uses them already, all across the world. The old Orbitz and Expedias of the world are technically online booking tools. Using an OBT through a travel management company (TMC), however, is an entirely different experience that every company should be considering for corporate travel. That’s not to say every company needs to have their own OBT, but they certainly need to be aware of it, especially if they’re spending anywhere close to 50k or more in travel annually. What makes this a unique experience starts with the travel policy. A travel policy, unlike the OBT, is something every company needs to have, which is why we offer services to help our clients create and implement one. Even if you don’t put a single employee on a single plane for five consecutive years, this needs to be in place. Every time an employee is 50 miles away and needs a hotel, a travel policy is a necessity for what is expected when hotels are being booked, cars are being rented and how to respond when things don’t go as expected. With a TMC-assisted OBT, that travel policy is fully uploaded and implemented into all operations of the OBT. Only want to allow employees to book the cheapest possible fare? Sure. Want to give a $200 leeway from that lowest possible fare to avoid double connections, long layovers or other inefficiencies? Absolutely. Not only is all that implemented, but admins can be notified or asked for approval anytime a booking is made outside the parameters of your company travel policy.
Corporate travel is utilized by nearly every business in one way or another—and it can seem like a major headache without the proper tools. Thankfully, Travel Travel has every tool and resource your business needs to take the burden off your shoulders so you can get back to enjoying life.
About The Experts
Travel Travel has been in business in Fargo since 1986. Their corporate agents have 20+ years of invaluable experience per agent on average. Travel Travel also became franchised by Travel Leaders in 2008. Travel Leaders is a juggernaut in the industry, producing approximately $37 billion in 2021 with six thousand locations. They are best known for their corporate travel management services. Among that elite company, Travel Travel has earned a plethora of awards to justify the title of expert, including 13 Agency of Excellence awards, the Travel Leaders Above and Beyond Award for Corporate Travel, Travel Leaders Sales Excellence Award, 500 Club Gold Member, two Agent of the Year awards and the two most prestigious awards that can be given: Golden Legacy Award and Associate of the Year.
A Tip From Travel Travel
If you’re looking for a highly robust option for your company to gain control and knowledge of your travel program, Travel Travel offers negotiated services for hotel and car rentals. The benefits include negotiating rates with mega-hotel and mega-car rental chains as well as diving into individual markets and negotiating with individual properties within those markets.
The amazing part? All of those rates from all of those properties throughout the world will also be uploaded into your OBT and visible when making bookings. Special icons can even be used to indicate negotiated rates, preferred suppliers and the like. It’s a great way of giving travelers the freedom to look and book without feeling like they’re being overly micro-managed and an overall great choice to have on the table.
Incentive Travel Ideas
When it comes to incentive travel ideas, the sky is the limit! What’s important is knowing your team. The experts at Travel Travel have done fishing and hunting trips from Lake of the Woods, MN, to the safaris of Africa. They’ve also sent entire companies to Costa Rica for an all-inclusive resort getaway and have had other companies send separate offices on separate trips according to each local office’s individual taste. Thinking of all the different ideas can be one of the most fun parts of the entire experience, so incentive travel is truly a wonderful way to show appreciation to the team that makes your company thrive.
Ocean or River Cruise
Walt Disney World
Jamaica
Personal Heritage Tours
Dominican Republic
Greece
Our Top Picks For Incentive Trips
For Golfing, Hiking & Spas
Arizona
There’s no other golfing destination quite like Arizona. From Phoenix to Tucson, Scottsdale, Chandler and Sedona, most every resort in the Copper State has four things: spas, shopping, red rock tourist attractions and golfing. Scottsdale has over 200 golf courses and lots of sunshine throughout the year. Most public courses are highly ranked championship courses.
Scotland
Scotland is the birthplace of the game, and offers over 550 courses across the country.
Over 550 courses in Scotland such as the world-famous Old Course at St. Andrews and lots of hidden gems like Prestwick.
To learn more about how Travel Travel can help your business’ corporate travel needs, visit ttravel.com or call 701.492.5000
