A travel policy reflects your company values and culture.It is the set of rules that helps companies to better shape their business travel procedures. Thus, many companies are in a continuous challenge with their corporate travellers when it comes to respecting this document.
Here are the different advantages that a travel policy will bring to your travel management strategy. In addition, you find here some tips to encourage employees to follow the travel policy.
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1. Ensure travellers' safety
To start with, ensuring the duty of care is continuous work for a travel manager. A travel policy helps you set clear safety procedures for the employees. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of travellers’ safety. According to GBTA, Over half of the travel buyers report their company has changed its travel policy.
2. Keep control on travel expense
An understandable travel policy that outlines the necessary rules about travel expenses contributes to maintaining stable costs during business trips. Besides, travel policies should contain all the refund procedures to make it easier for business travellers to ask for their travel expense reports.
In this context, digitizing travel expense reports is something that companies can’t ignore nowadays.
3. Save time on bookings
We all know that booking a business trip takes time from booking the transport to the accommodation, to the mobility, and all the expense report part. With that in mind, a well-structured travel policy allows your travellers to better understand what to book, where to book and for what budget.
In addition as a company, you should implement a corporate travel management solution that helps you filter booking results based on your travel policy. This will save travellers time when managing a corporate trip.
Moreover, this document prevents the rejection of certain trips, after spending a lot of time planning them by the traveller.
4. Encourage to respect the environmental ambitions of the company
In this article, we discussed the advantages of a classic travel policy, but what about a sustainable travel policy? Here is our article about how to build a green travel policy.
To encourage employees to save carbon emission and help the planet, you can specify the following points in your travel policy document:
- For a certain duration and distance, make train travel compulsory or give it preference over air travel.
- If flying is necessary, favour direct flights.
- For long-haul journeys, identify as many airlines as possible that use recent aircraft, as they are theoretically more fuel-efficient. Two examples to consider when making your list of preferred airlines are: use of biofuels and a carbon offset programme.
- Encourage your business travellers to use public transport in town.
- When renting a car or taking a taxi, recommend electric or hybrid cars.
- When it comes to car travel, company carpooling is a good way to not only bring employees together on business trips but also to reduce their carbon footprint. Why carpool in your company?
