Travel Management Systems: Smart Apps Designed To Facilitate Business Travel
Now that the COVID pandemic is over, travel management systems are valuable because business travel is back on the table.
The term “business travel” might easily evoke images of a glittering world filled with business-class flights, expensive corporate dinners, luxury hotel stays, and various enjoyable activities. However, the reality is much harsher and far from the appealing scenario we just described.
Business trips may be exhausting for both those who travel and those who manage them behind the scenes. It is very hard to plan, distribute, and manage finances for such excursions. Consequently, travel software development companies come up with a solution called travel management system.
What is a travel management system?
A travel management system is software that manages all aspects of your business travel. They are typically integrated with travel service providers, providing real-time rates, bookings, and trip logistics in one location.
Managers can keep track of bookings, cancellations, changes, and rescheduling in real-time. This replaces a lot of the email back-and-forth that used to be necessary.
In today’s modern era where travel is so essential to operations, business travel apps are a must-have for any company that takes its travel seriously.
A future outlook
We’d like to present some facts on emerging corporate travel and travel management. This way, you will have a better idea of how to manage your company trips and keep up with industry changes.
- The global market for business travel is expected to post a CAGR of 3% from 2020 to 2027.
- Business travelers make up 12% of an airline’s passengers, but they represent 75% of the profit.
- 30% of employees would accept roles with a lower salary if the position offered more opportunities to travel.
- 60% of business travelers don’t even understand the benefits of their travel policy.
- When surveyed, 98% of travel managers claim the most significant metrics are policy compliance, travel experience, and expenditure.
- The majority of modern travelers (57%) want to have a single application to manage their planning and booking needs.
- 67% of modern travelers expect brands to help them make good travel decisions based on previous travel information.
- 79% of employees say that business travel experience impacts their overall job satisfaction.
- 48% of corporate travelers say that the most important aspect of a travel program is the ability to book for themselves.
According to the numbers presented above, business travel is currently a trend that will continue to expand for many years. Business travel directly boosts firm growth and employee satisfaction. Employees will accept a lower salary if the job provides travel opportunities.
Consequently, with the expansion of business travel, the emergence of a travel management system is crucial. This travel software solution is directly related to the effectiveness of business trips, the management of company expenses, and data history for future business trips.
Key benefits of a management system in business trip optimizations
Facilitate the process for travel managers
Travel managers are often inundated with requests, and the sheer number of moving parts can make things hard to handle. Having a travel management system that works well and can be counted on makes their lives much easier.
A good travel mobile app development solution also gives them more time and resources to focus on more important tasks. Thanks to this travel software solution, travel managers can avoid boring tasks and instead focus on optimization, which can make a big difference in how much money they spend on travel.
Enhance operational management
A good travel management system will improve the quality of your operations by putting all of the important data and decisions about travel in one place.
Moreover, travel software development companies also develop solutions that let you connect them to other parts of your business. By keeping track of everything in one place, you can reduce mistakes and speed up the process to get better results more quickly.
Reduce the time spent on travel-related tasks
Travel management systems help automate numerous routine tasks that travel managers used to do themselves. This not only cuts down on the chance of mistakes but also frees up time that can be used in other ways.
Travel managers don’t have to deal with tedious procedures that are needed for administrative purposes. Instead, they can focus on the places where a human touch is needed.
Strengthen business reporting
A solid travel management system will help the organization understand how travel affects the business. Getting detailed reports on travel activities is a great way to keep track of business travel and ensure that it is doing what it needs to do to meet strategic goals.
By measuring this more carefully, you can find and get rid of waste, and small adjustments can also help you make more money in the long run.
Streamline expenditure report management
An effective travel management system will connect to the larger system for managing expense reports and make it easy for data to move from one system to the other. This system makes it easier to keep track of expense reports.
Besides, this travel software solution ensures that everything is documented for quality assurance. Moreover, it makes a big difference when it comes to remittances and reimbursements. Lastly, it helps people understand how much money is spent on key travel.
Must-have management system features to boost app efficiency
When comparing travel management systems, it’s critical to determine which aspects are most significant. Here are the must-have features of the management system that can help you plan your travel in a safe, efficient, and cheap way.
Flexible travel policies
The travel policy is one of the most significant aspects of a travel management system. Even if office managers or travel managers book on behalf of travelers, in-app travel regulations are still required to keep administrators on the same page.
Travel software development companies should be able to tailor your in-app policy based on various parameters, including:
- Policies tailored to specific travelers (such as c-level or a department that often has to book last-minute flights)
- Global hotel room prices policies
- Hotel rates per night by city
- Global strategies for the lowest possible domestic and international flight costs
- Maximum route-specific flight cost
- A minimum number of days is necessary for advanced reservations.
- Maximum global train cost
- Maximum train fare for specific routes
Your travel management system should allow you to configure your travel policy so it is active and ready to use whenever someone schedules a trip. Instead of a travel policy that is just a dull document, you have it right in your booking app, where it counts the most.
Adaptable approval workflows
What happens if you need to book a trip that the company’s policy doesn’t cover? A good question.
Your travel management system should have approval protocols built into the platform. This way, if something goes against company policy, the person planning the trip can ask for approval and record their trip data (instead of sending an email and losing all their hard work in selecting the right itinerary).
You should be able to configure these approval workflows in whatever way you desire, including assigning different approvers to various teams and adjusting the level of strictness.
Is approval required for all trips, excursions that violate policy, or travel scheduled by specific travelers? Your travel software solution should be highly customizable.
Extensive inventory
Your policy and permission routines are vital in assisting you to keep travel compliance around the clock, but so is your inventory access. If your travel management system lacks low-cost accommodations and flight carriers, you’re passing on significant cost-cutting potential.
Travel spend reporting
The capacity to report on business travel is one of the most crucial functions of any travel management system. You’ll want to be able to track the following:
- Spending on travel by historical period
- Department or team travel expenses
- Amount of travel planned outside of policy
- Travel expenses by project, client, or event
- The amount of time spent traveling to recruiting
Of course, this means that, in addition to the capacity to generate reports, your business travel app should allow you to apply labels and tags to trips.
Consolidated invoicing
Booking all of your business travel in one location is the simplest way to keep track of it. However, certain travel management systems do not act as a single vendor, so you will still receive various invoices.
Choose a travel software solution that consolidates all your monthly business travel into a single vendor invoice to save time and hassle. The finance department will love you.
A single place for trip reviews
The entire purpose of a travel management system is to consolidate trips. Let’s see how this plays out in the real world. Assume that 20 individuals need to book their trips to upcoming events. As a travel manager, you should be able to log in to your business travel app and check:
- Who has successfully booked their travel within the policy parameters?
- Why is an out-of-policy booking being requested?
- Who has an upcoming trip (they’ve saved an itinerary but haven’t booked it yet)?
- Who hasn’t planned a trip?
When you are in charge of planning travel or assisting travelers in booking their travel, you must be aware of what is going on. You must have a rapid overview to determine which travelers require additional assistance.
Furthermore, once trips are scheduled, you’ll want a single point of contact for confirmations, itinerary details, cancellation alerts, and so on. You should consult with a travel software development company about tailoring your travel business app ideas to your needs.
Keep track of traveler information
It is not necessary to spend two hours booking business travel. When you save all of your travelers’ information in your travel management system (including legal name, travel document, nation and number, birthday, and so on), it can take much less time — even minutes.
Save loyalty points
Regarding loyalty points, each company has its own rules. Some companies don’t let travelers earn points on their own loyalty accounts. Instead, they require that company travel be credited to the company’s account so that rewards can be earned.
In either case, you should choose a travel management system that keeps track of these program numbers. This means that travelers won’t have to enter them every time they book a trip.
If your firm only allows points to be credited to the company account, an office assistant or administrator can enter the program numbers into each traveler’s profile.
Notable travel software products
Paramount WorkPlace — Powerful tool for all business scopes
Paramount WorkPlace is a fully integrated piece of software that makes it much easier to handle travel issues.
This travel business app fully integrated travel and expense solution helps employees by providing a smart booking engine that pulls in the best travel information from the industry. After that, this travel software solution applies this information to show trip options based on your company’s policies.
This booking engine combines corporate travel policy, pre-trip authorization requirements, and negotiated airline, hotel, and car rental rates into a best-in-class booking path that syncs travel data with the expense solution.
TravelPerk: Answers for all things business travel
TravelPerk is a smart tool for small businesses that need to travel. It has everything you need to manage business travel efficiently all in one strong platform. This travel management system can be used for many different things, like booking flights and hotels and keeping track of travel receipts.
The interface for TravelPerk is just beautiful, giving its users great control and visibility. This travel software solution makes it very easy to get expense reports and useful information about how much a company spends on travel.
Plus! Its app is easy to use on mobile devices, which makes the booking process much easier.
Salestrip: A solution for small and mid-sized enterprises
Salestrip combines travel management and expense management in a way that helps companies keep track of their spending and grow quickly.
The AI-driven interface of Salestrip gives employees of a company a wide range of flights, hotels, and rentals from which to choose. Therefore, employees don’t have to go to other sites to plan their trips.
The travel software development company promotes a feature called “Intelligent Trip Request,” which lets employees make travel requests in the same place where a manager looks at them and says “yes” or “no.”
A bright future ahead
Many firms appear to be plagued by antiquated processes and ineffective expense management. This can lead to a waste of critical time and resources. Fortunately, these issues now have a fantastic solution in the development of travel management software created exclusively for businesses that schedule frequent business travels.
Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
