As the world recovers from COVID and its aftermath, business travel is back on the map.
Many big and small adjustments have now become the new normal for all walks of life. This adaptation process has also affected how businesses organize and manage their corporate travel.
If you haven’t yet updated your company’s travel policy, you can’t afford to put off this decision anymore.
Here is the count-down of the top ten considerations for creating an effective travel policy for your post-pandemic business.
10. Planning, Reservations, and Deal-Shopping
Decide whether you require your employees to make reservations in advance.
You can make recommendations for researching travel fare comparison sites like Kayak or Booking.com or suggest preferred vendors for booking travel tickets.
Discourage your employees from simply showing up at a hotel without pre-booking a room, otherwise, they’ll be charged a premium.
9. Thank You For Being A Valued Member. Here’s Your Free Upgrade!
Build business relationships with travel vendors, hotels, airlines, etc.
They have all kinds of rates for corporate accounts. They also have loyalty programs providing points for each trip or stay.
A good offer can come your way through these loyalty programs in the form of free upgrades or discounts for corporate retreats.
8. Employees Carting Around Stuff On Business Travel Is Lame
Showing up to conferences, seminars, or tours carrying baggage is both unmanageable and unprofessional.
Allow your employees to use a secure luggage storage service.
Trusted companies like Vertoe are good for business travelers looking for short-term luggage drop-off points. Travelers make an online reservation and drop luggage off pre-meeting and pick it up after – and the price is just a few bucks.
7. All Work Travel And No Play Makes Your Employee A Burnt-out Mess
Attending a conference at the Philadelphia Convention Center without heading to Pat or Geno’s for a cheesesteak might as well be against the law.
Let your people know when they are traveling to take some time to enjoy the roses, try out the local cuisine, or absorb the local culture.
It’s a fantastic way to book-end a trip.
You could even make leisure travel post-business convenient for your employees by reimbursing small expenses like the charges for luggage storage in Philadelphia.
That’s possible not only in Philadelphia but with Vertoe your employees can enjoy the facility in more than 65 cities across the globe.
6. Planning For The Unexpected
Travel is unpredictable.
You might need to cancel or change plans because of severe weather, client requests, or if an employee gets COVID! (Ugh.)
Insurance can cover the expense of changing or canceling reservations.
5. Ride, Sally, Ride!
Corporate accounts aren’t just for hotels and airlines but also ground transit.
Major car rental companies and rideshare companies have corporate accounts, allowing you to track company-wide travel costs.
4. Fast Food Or Fancy Feasts
Create guidance around what your employees can (and can’t) spend when purchasing food, drinks, and entertainment expenses.
Keep it simple by giving a daily “per diem” and not dictating how much a person can spend on breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Employees should have the ability to spend a little more when entertaining customers.
3. Put It On Plastic!
Easier tracking of travel expenses is the obvious reason employees should use a dedicated credit card when traveling.
Many credit cards also include travel benefits such as more loyalty club points.
Not only this, but many business credit cards also factor in free upgrades, rental car insurance, trip cancellation coverage, and more with travel benefits.
2. Conference Commando
In the book Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi coined the term conference commando.
He advises business travelers to “hijack” conference activities to make the best use of their time, filling their time with one-on-one meetings, group meals, and special outings for top prospective clients and collaborators.
Your policy should give guidelines for this.
1. Back at the Office
Nothing worse than coming back to the office after a week on the road to piles of work nobody took care of while you were gone, right?
Remind employees to arrange for another team member to cover some of their work while they’re out of the office, to put up an out-of-office message on the e-mail, and give some catch-up time upon return.
So, there you have our top ten considerations to review when creating your travel policy.
Of course, you are going to want to add the typical parts of a travel policy like don’t stay at the ritziest hotel and order champagne and caviar and yada yada yada.
We hope you found some innovative ideas and insights in this article to help in this post-pandemic world.