When it comes to cutting the costs of business travel for your employees, asking them to try sharing rooms isn’t the best place to start (or finish, for that matter).
Instead, we’ve put together some easy (and far less offensive) ways you can reduce your business travel costs while maintaining the level of comfort your employees expect.
- Make Sure You Authorise Any Last-Minute Travel Plans
If an employee has to make a last-minute travel decision, make sure they have to gain your authorisation first. For example, a plane ticket booked weeks in advance may only cost £200, but a day or two before travel it could exceed £1,000.
Booking these types of flights should only happen in emergency scenarios that cannot be avoided. And by making your employees accountable for this, it’ll encourage them to be well organised going forwards.
- Use a Reputed Business Travel Company
By using a travel company that specialises in business travel, e.g. Statesman, they’ll help you keep costs to a minimum, while assisting with getting the right plans and policies in place. These organisations can also help you cut employee spending and can provide local travel arrangements in each destination – which will, again, reduce your costs.
- Ask Employees to Use Less Expensive Transport
It’s easy to hop in a taxi when you’re travelling from meeting to meeting, but these can often be far more expensive than other public transport services. Underground trains, buses, trams and shuttle services tend to be much more affordable, so try to encourage your employees to look into these in advance. Equally, suggest that if a large group of employees are travelling, they share taxis wherever they’re going.
- Try Holding Virtual Meetings When You Can
Various services, like Skype for Business, for example, are becoming increasingly popular in the corporate world. That’s because they offer an easy way to communicate with people all over the world without the need for travel.
Granted, these aren’t going to be sufficient enough in some cases, but if you can assess where they will work, you could cut down your travel costs quite considerably – perhaps even reducing the number of employees that need to travel to a meeting destination, too.
As you can see, it doesn’t need to be difficult to start trimming off some costs from your business travel expenses. Rather, it’s all about addressing your current system and analysing where you can make changes that’ll help save you money in the long run.
