Corporate Travel Policy Best Practices

A corporate travel policy is important to enforce because it helps protect your employees during their business-related travels and it also helps protect your business from lawsuits. If you don’t currently have such a policy in place or if you feel like the one you do have needs some major adjustments, here are a few things you should know about best practices to follow when creating your travel policy.

Elements of a Travel Policy

A travel policy is simply a set of guidelines that govern business-related travel. Most travel policies include guidelines or rules regarding the following:

• Airfare
• Lodging
• Rental cars
• Taxis
• Meals
• Dry cleaning
• Client entertainment
• Travel documents

These policies also typically outline safety procedures for employees, including guidelines for checking in or reporting where they are at certain times. Expense reports and reimbursements are usually outlined in travel policies so employees know which expenses are eligible for reimbursement and which are not.

But the purpose of this guide is not to inform you of every item that should or should not be included in your corporate travel policy. Instead, it’s an outline of the travel policy best practices your business should follow.

Automate Your Travel Policies

Once you create a travel policy, you may think the hard work is over. But enforcing the policy may be more challenging than you think. Most businesses have travel policies in place, but employees don’t always follow them. Depending on how detailed your policy is, your employees may feel overwhelmed by it and may not know how to follow it effectively.

If you notice that your employees do not take the corporate travel policy seriously or don’t seem to know much about it, it may be time to automate your travel policy processes. To do this, you want to ensure that the travel booking process is integrated into your corporate travel platform. That way, employees won’t be able to book something that falls outside of policy (unless, of course, they are able to get approval from a manager).

If you use a travel app to help automate your travel policies, employees will have to get their trips approved before they can complete their booking. If they attempt to book something that doesn’t mesh with the corporate travel policy, the trip will automatically be denied. It’s as simple as that!

Book All of Your Travel With the Same Business

Booking all company travel through one company can make it much easier for employees to adhere to your travel policies. Booking all of your travel through one business can also help you save money and take a lot of the guesswork out of corporate travel plans.

When you utilize the services of Rocketrip for your corporate travel needs, you’ll also receive:

• Detailed spending information broken down by traveler, department and route
• Government alerts to help you analyze and monitor regional travel risks
• Real-time visibility on traveler locations and active trips
• Customizable alerts for spending that falls outside of your corporate policy

If keeping your employees safe during their travels and saving money are both important to you, consider booking all of your flights through Rocketrip as part of your corporate travel policy.

Allow Employees To Self-Book Their Trips

Would you like to empower employees to book their own trips (within policy) and save time? If so, you may want to enable self-booking as part of your travel policy. That way, overworked administrators won’t have to handle everyone’s travel requests, but can still assist with finalizing travel requests if necessary.

There are ways to set up self-booking options that must fall within the guidelines of your corporate travel policy. Setting up such options takes some time upfront, but can save your company a lot of time down the road. One good option is to allow employees to plan their own business trips, then request approval for every trip so that a second set of eyes can evaluate whether the booking details adhere to corporate guidelines.

Use a Convenient Booking Resource

Though automated travel policies work well for some businesses, they may not be the best fit for all businesses. If your employees don’t like using automated travel platforms, or they don’t feel like the platforms offer the best deals available, they may try to circumvent the process anyway.

You may find that a booking resource is the best tool to help your corporate travelers follow corporate travel policies while also getting the best available price. You can try out different travel booking tools until you find one that resonates well with the majority of your employees.

Provide Corporate Travelers With Travel Resources

Finally, if you want to encourage employees to follow your corporate travel policy, be sure to make your policy easily available. Remember, your travel policy doesn’t need to be pages long. In fact, the shorter you can make it, the better. You’ll want to make sure all of the most important things are covered in your policy, but you also want to make it easy for employees to review the rules before booking their upcoming business trips.

In addition to a user-friendly travel policy, you may also want to make the following travel-related resources easily available to your employees:

• Reimbursement procedures
• Travel insurance carrier information
• Emergency response information
• Duty of care provider for international and domestic travel (if applicable)
• Instructions for how to get travel support when needed

These resources and any other tidbits of information that are directly related to corporate travel should be included in the corporate travel policy or adjacent to it. The key is to make all of this information easily accessible to employees before, during and after their travels.

Book Your Trip Today

Now that you know how important it is to create a corporate travel policy, it’s time to find a booking agency that will help you save money and keep your employees safe. Rocketrip is dedicated to following best travel practices and commits to helping you save money on all your corporate travel needs. To get started, reach out to us today and we’ll get in contact with you as soon as possible.