Having a Corporate Travel Planner as part of your company makes business travel much smoother. Whether you hire an in-house corporate travel planner, turn to an agency, or use a combination, your company’s business travellers will see the benefits.

This article will give you all you need to develop a solid business travel plan for every trip.

What a corporate travel planner does

Corporate Travel Managers have the job of planning business travel that’s reliable, efficient, and cost-effective.

In terms of making the trip possible, they need to:

Book flights or train travel;
Find accommodation;
Arrange ground travel.

The best business trip planners always remember to make necessary arrangements around ground travel. One way to do this is by allowing travellers to self-book work rides and charge them to your company in the Bolt app — make this possible by signing up with Bolt Business.

But there’s far more to corporate travel planning than making bookings:

Manage work-related expense processes.
Monitor travel spending and look for ways to cut costs.
Provide a business trip itinerary that suits the needs of those travelling.

A corporate travel planner sharing information about an upcoming business trip with a colleague.

7 qualities of the best Business Travel Planners

79% of business travellers state that business travel impacts their job satisfaction. To give them the best possible experience, you need a Corporate Travel Planner with these qualities.

1. Attention to detail

An experienced travel planner knows everything that could happen during a business trip. Their attention to detail will ensure that travellers encounter as few problems as possible.

Good practices for business travel planning include:

Getting travellers to double-check the validity of their travel documents;
Saving pictures of all physical travel documents digitally as a backup;
Drawing up a detailed business travel itinerary (find one later in the article).

2. Well-organised

Corporate Travel Planners need excellent organisational skills to ensure that every business trip goes to plan. Depending on the number of business travellers within your company, they’ll plan several trips simultaneously.

The most organised individuals in the industry will go the extra mile by planning a productive and enjoyable itinerary and even giving travellers a business travel checklist.

3. Ability to negotiate

Making business trips cost-effective is one of the most important aspects for companies. When you work with a Corporate Travel Planner with excellent negotiation skills, they’ll get the best flight, accommodation, and insurance rates.

4. Time management

To plan multiple business trips simultaneously, Corporate Travel Managers must master time management. Even last-minute business trips are handled with expertise by the best professionals.

5. Problem-solving

Business travellers can run into an issue at any time during their trip. Whether it’s an issue with travel documents, a hotel booking, or onward travel, your Business Travel Planner must be ready to find a solution.

6. Remember unique preferences

Every business traveller has their individual preferences. Whether travellers prefer an aisle seat, enjoy active travel, or like to travel early, a Corporate Travel Planner will remember each person’s desires.

7. Analytical mindset

Planning and managing business trips gives your company a wealth of data that can make future business trips more cost-effective and time-efficient. Corporate Travel Managers should be able to look into the numbers and propose areas of improvement.

Tips to prepare for international travel

Travelling to a new international destination holds great potential but also means facing many unknowns. A Corporate Travel Planner will help to ease any concerns by researching:

Visa requirements;
Necessary travel insurance.
Transport options;
Accommodation;
Local currency;
Language;
Local customs;
Health precautions;
Weather forecast.

Colleagues following a business travel plan during a business trip.

In-house Business Travel Planners

Hiring a Corporate Travel Manager to manage business travel for your company keeps all business trip planning in-house. They’ll take responsibility for booking travel and accommodation, looking for cost-saving opportunities, and managing the company’s travel policy.

Pros

A strong line of communication: having a Business Trip Planner in the office allows your team to speak with them in person every day.
Make quick adjustments: having that clear line of communication makes it possible to resolve any last-minute changes at a moment’s notice — all it takes is to go to their desk or send them a quick message over Slack.
More visibility over cost-saving opportunities: over time, your in-house professional will have a deep understanding of your company-wide travel needs and be able to recommend ways to cut costs.
A personal touch: you can get recommendations and advice when a professional trip planner is in your office. They may even recommend the best business travel apps.

Cons

Investments in hiring, training, and equipment: like hiring an agency, in-house recruitment comes at a cost and means investing in the appropriate travel management tools.
They may have other responsibilities: depending on your company’s size, your professional trip planner may get pulled into other time-consuming projects.
The number of trips may fluctuate: if your employees aren’t travelling for business consistently all year round, there may be little reason to hire someone in-house.

Outsourcing a travel planner company

Turning to an agency is the alternative to hiring an in-house Corporate Travel Planner — allowing you to outsource all aspects of business travel planning.

Pros

Pay when you need them: if you decide to cut back on travel for a while, you can part ways with the travel planner company or adjust your contract.
Relationships with vendors: working with travel service providers daily for various companies allows agencies to develop relationships and potentially pass discounts to your company.
24/7 support: an in-house travel planner gives you someone in the office to call on when you need them, but travel agencies often have customer support teams online 24 hours a day, all year round.

Cons

Give up some control: you hire a travel agency to relieve your company of managing business travel in-house, which can lead to you relieving yourself of some of the responsibility and control.
Communication breakdown: having an in-house corporate travel planner can lead to better communication and extended back and forths.

Essential tools for Corporate Travel Managers

Whether you hire someone in-house or turn to an agency, various tools are needed to manage corporate travel.

Ground travel

Being a business travel organiser means making arrangements for all areas of a business trip, and it’s important to remember ground travel. Bolt Business gives your team a comfortable, convenient, and flexible way to arrange travel to and from the office, airport, or client meetings.

Travel management

A tool such as Tripit gives you and your business travellers a convenient way of following an itinerary keeps travel documents in one place, and gives visibility of carbon emissions.

Expense management

After a business trip, you want your travellers to return to their day-to-day work. But they can’t do that when manually filling out expense reports. Expense management tools help with this.

Leading examples include:

These allow travellers to take photos of receipts, which become a digital expense report, speeding up the process of claiming expenses.

Regarding ground travel, when your company has a Bolt Business account, your employees see your company as a payment method in their Bolt app — removing the need for expenses altogether!

Accommodation

Hotels aren’t the only option for business travellers. And a growing number of business travellers are looking for alternative accommodation to hotels, such as hosted accommodation and homestays — especially amongst female employees.

Services such as Airbnb for Work give your travellers diverse options when looking for somewhere to stay.

A business traveller arriving at accommodation booked by a Corporate Travel Planner.

Use a business itinerary template

A business itinerary includes all the information a business traveller needs during the trip. By breaking the trip into different parts and use the business travel plan template below as a guide:

Airport transfer: instructions for getting to the airport.
Departure flight: departure time, airline, gate number, landing time.
Airport transfer: instructions for getting to the hotel.
Accommodation: address, confirmation number, dates, check-in and check-out times.
Meeting, conference, event details: date, start time, end time, venue address, contact names, contact details.
Airport transfer: instructions for getting to the airport.
Return flight details: departure time, airline, gate number, landing time.
Airport transfer: instructions for getting home from the airport.

With Bolt Business, you can easily make airport transfers using the same app in 45+ countries.

Manage corporate ground travel with Bolt Business

With flights and accommodation booked, you still need to connect the dots — and ground travel is the answer.

Rather than leaving business travellers unsure about how they’ll get from the airport to their next destination, add a work payment method to their Bolt app by signing up with Bolt Business.

Corporate travel planners have complete control over who can travel, when they can travel, and how much they can spend from a Company Dashboard. Then your travellers will see your company as a payment method in their Bolt app.

They can book work rides as and when needed or schedule rides up to 3 days in advance.

Corporate travel planner FAQs

What is a travel planner?

A travel planner works to give clients the best possible travel experience by arranging flights, accommodation, and all other essential travel.

What is corporate travel management?

Corporate travel management is an umbrella term for all aspects of a business trip, such as arranging flights, accommodation, and ground travel.

Who manages corporate travel?

Companies have three main options for corporate travel management: hiring an in-house travel planner, using a travel agency, or turning to booking tools. Many companies use a combination of all three.

Create a Bolt Business account for your company online today.

Corporate Travel Planner: how to plan your business trips

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