A travel policy is a set of guidelines that govern how employees can travel for work, including everything from booking travel arrangements to reimbursing expenses.

The main goal of a travel policy is to ensure that employees travel safely and efficiently while keeping costs under control — for both international and domestic travel.

In this article, you’ll find out the importance of implementing a travel policy and get practical tips for implementing a travel policy that works for your business.

What is a travel policy?

A travel policy is a set of rules that outlines how your business travellers can book and expense work-related travel.

For the organisation, having a single company-wide travel policy helps to regulate and standardise employee travel expenses and arrangements. Meanwhile, employees have a clear understanding of the expense claims they can make following a business trip.

A good business travel policy will outline the necessary steps employees should take when arranging business travel, including:

The approved modes of transport.
The types of expenses that are reimbursable.
How to submit expenses.
The maximum allowable amounts for all possible expenses incurred.

Colleagues discussing the corporate travel policy in their workplace.

Why you need a business travel policy

Giving your employees a clear understanding of how they can arrange business travel brings benefits to each of your employees and the company as a whole.

Benefits for employees

Outlines which costs incurred to the employees they can expense.
Let employees know which tools they can use to make travel bookings.
Looks out for each employee’s personal safety.
Allows employees to make travel arrangements that are in line with your company’s travel policy.

Benefits for the company

Ensures that all business travel is for business purposes.
Ensures that all travel is in line with your company’s aims and goals.
Makes sure that every trip is cost-effective, with employees only claiming actual expenses.
Ensures fair and equitable travel for all employees.

Colleagues in the workplace discussing the company's corporate travel policy.

Everything you need to include in your business travel policy

Your travel policy needs to be comprehensive. So don’t forget to include the essentials:

Stress the importance of the trip bringing value to your organisation. It must be clear that you’ll only cover travel-related expenses for essential business trips.
Suggest that employees book travel in advance, especially when booking an airline ticket, as this can keep travel costs to a minimum. Your employees can book a car up to 3 days in advance in the Bolt app. And charge the order straight to the company, removing the need for expense reporting.
Include a process for getting visas and work permits
Highlight whether employees can fly business class or bo
Highlight the importance of travel insurance and include contact details for your company’s preferred service — AVIVA, for example.
Recommend that your employees make reimbursement requests within a set timeframe from the first day of their business trip (within 60 days, for example).
Whether you’ll provide employees with a daily travel allowance (per diem) to spend on meals, drinks, and essential daily supplies.
The inclusion of your stance on entertainment expenses is also essential — such as purchasing refreshments for a client.

Including all of the above will ensure that your travel policy isn’t failing your employees.

Business traveller ordering a car in the Bolt app.

How to implement a corporate travel policy

Assess your business needs

Before drafting your travel policy, it’s important to understand your company’s travel needs. To do this, you need to:

Consider the frequency of travel.
List common destinations.
Find out the travel preferences of your business travellers.

This assessment will help tailor a policy that meets your organisation’s specific needs.

Define the business goals

Before you start drafting and implementing a travel policy, you must come up with clear goals and objectives that you aim to achieve. You may need to:

Reduce costs
Increase employee safety
Make booking more seamless

Only when you clearly understand your goals will you be able to implement a business travel policy that works for everyone.

Involve stakeholders

All relevant individuals and teams should be involved in the process of creating and implementing your company’s travel policy. This means gathering feedback from business travellers (who will need to follow the guidelines) and the teams who need to handle the admin side of travel, such as Finance, Human Resources, and Payroll.

Make it easy to understand and follow

A simple and clear travel policy is easier for your business travellers to follow. The word ‘policy’ gives the impression that the final document needs to be overly complicated, but the simpler it is, the fewer misunderstandings there will be.

Incorporate duty of care

Employee safety needs to be your biggest priority. To ensure safety, your travel policy must include guidelines for supporting travellers in case of emergency, such as how they can get assistance and protocols for checking on welfare during business-related travel.

💡 The Bolt app includes a range of safety features, including 24/7 support, an Emergency Assist button, and the option to share trip details with colleagues, family, or friends.

Employee sharing their trip details with colleagues in the Bolt app.

6. Make the most of technology

Travel management software will help you to streamline booking processes, track expenses, and ensure policy compliance. These tools can also offer insights into spending patterns and help identify opportunities for savings.

7. Implement a sustainable travel policy

Any travel policy guidelines that you follow will stress the importance of sustainability.

Sustainability in business is more important than ever. Any business travel policies you implement must reflect your organisation’s sustainability efforts.

Find out how to build a sustainable travel policy.

8. Share the travel policy with your employees

Making your company’s travel policy known to your employees comes down to clear communication. Make sure the travel policy stands alone as it’s own document — not hidden away within a larger policy.

You should make your company’s corporate travel policy document accessible to all employees via your company’s internal intranet or employee portal. You should share it with all new hires when they join the company.

It’s also helpful to run training sessions with your employees and inform new hires about the travel policy.

Employees discussing the company's travel policy.

Common challenges with travel policies

Implementing a travel policy in a corporate setting isn’t without its challenges. From ensuring compliance to accommodating the diverse needs of employees, these are some hurdles that you’ll need to overcome:

Ensuring compliance.
Balancing cost with comfort.
Communicating your policy
Managing exceptions.
An ever-changing travel landscape.
Global considerations (for international business travel).

Find out why you need to give each of these areas lengthy consideration below.

1. Ensuring compliance

When you implement a travel policy, the main outcome you want is for your employees to comply. But it’s not always that simple.

Unless your travel policy is clear, your employees may book travel options that are more convenient or luxurious than those outlined in the policy — leading to increased costs and administrative headaches.

2. Balancing cost with comfort

Finding the right balance between costs, comfort, and employee safety is challenging

Travel policies that are too restrictive may lead to employee dissatisfaction and non-compliance. Meanwhile, policies that are too lenient can result in unnecessary expenses.

Remember that while cost savings are important, you don’t want to put an employee in a situation where they’re unable to travel.

3. Communicating your policy

Your business travellers can’t follow the rules outlined in the travel policy unless they’ve read it.

You need to ensure that everyone understands the travel policy and has an opportunity to raise questions or concerns before they travel for work.

4. Managing exceptions

Some business trips will likely fall outside the scope of your standard travel policy, especially as your business grows.

Deciding when to make exceptions and how to manage these cases without setting precedents that could undermine the policy is a delicate balancing act.

5. An ever-changing travel landscape

Your company must constantly reassess travel policies to address potential security and health risks your business travellers may face.

6. Global considerations

Creating a travel policy that accommodates various legal, cultural, and logistical considerations across different countries can be complex for multinational companies.

Consider employees who prefer to self-book travel

There’s a growing trend, especially amongst millennials and Gen Z, to self-book travel and accommodation for business-related travel.

You can put this preference down to a combination of factors:

Familiarity with technology.
A desire for flexibility.
Work-life balance.
Speed and efficiency.

It’s especially important to consider this approach for ground transportation. With Bolt Business, your employees can use a company payment method in the Bolt app to order a car when needed (as long as the order meets the company’s usage guidelines).

Bolt Business gives your team the convenience, flexibility, and reliability they need when travelling for work—all without the need to manually submit travel expense reports.

Now let’s find out why your team will appreciate the ability to self-book their travel.

1. Familiarity with technology

Your younger employees are accustomed to using apps and websites for personal travel.

Their comfort with technology makes self-booking a natural choice for them — as they can easily navigate travel platforms, compare options, and book what they need without intermediaries.

You can make this familiarity with technology a benefit to your business. By creating a Bolt Business account, your employees can use Bolt Business for work-related travel. And if they use Bolt for personal travel, they’ll already know how to use it.

2. Desire for flexibility

Self-booking allows your employees to tailor business travel to their preferences and schedules.

Having this freedom is valuable allowing them to travel when it best suits their schedule. And when you support the use of familiar technology (apps or websites) for business related travel, it enhances their comfort and satisfaction. And can also lead to more productive business trips.

3. Work-life balance

There’s a growing trend to merge business trips with some personal vacation time. Having the flexibility to self-book gives your employees the option to extend their trips for leisure purposes

Taking this into consideration will help to build a strong work culture and increase job satisfaction.

4. Speed and efficiency

The ability to quickly book travel without waiting for approval or going through a third party is a significant advantage for employees.

They value efficiency and can make swift decisions when there are time-sensitive business opportunities or adjust plans without lengthy approval processes causing a delay.

A business traveller booking a car in line with the corporate business travel policy.

Automate the booking process for ordering cars

Submitting expenses is a time-consuming process that follows business trips. But with Bolt Business, you can create a travel and expense policy that removes the need for manual expense reports.

Your employees can order a car in the Bolt app and use a company payment method, allowing them to do so without having to submit expense reports.

If your organisation’s business travellers go abroad for work, they can use the same Bolt app to order a car in 45+ countries and 500+ cities.

Managing travel with Bolt Business allows you to implement unique corporate travel policies for different teams in your organisation. And there’s no need for a lengthy approval process — your employees will only be able to make an order if it complies with your travel policy.

Airport transfers.
Last-mile commutes to a meeting, hotel, or event.
Safe travel during the night.

And because your employees can only make orders that are in line with your company travel policy, you don’t need a real-time travel approval process.

Rental car reservations

Bolt Drive* gives your company all the benefits of a fleet without having to buy or sign a long-term lease.

Company cars are parked 95% of the time, yet they’re still your responsibility during this time — draining your financial resources. With Bolt Drive, your employees can hire a rental vehicle day or night for as long as they need it — minutes, hours, or days.

Fuel, parking, and insurance are all included in the rental fee, which is based on the distance travelled and rental time. There’s no down payment.

With Bolt Business, you can let your employees use a company payment method to pay for the car, allowing them to charge their expenses related to car rentals straight to the employer.

Find a Bolt Drive vehicle in the Bolt app;
Reserve it;
Unlock the car;
Drive to your destination.

At the end of your journey, park the car in an approved area, leave the keys inside, and end the ride in the Bolt app.

*Currently available in certain markets.

Two employees using Bolt Drive to travel for work.

Include meals as part of your travel policy

Meal allowances for business travel are an essential part of a comprehensive travel policy. They ensure that employees have a clear understanding of what is covered during their business trips, promoting fairness and transparency.

A daily meal allowance, or a per diem, allows employees to budget their meals without the need to save receipts or submit expense reports for every meal.

Benefits of providing a meal allowance

By setting clear, fair, and flexible guidelines, companies can support their employees during travel, maintain control over expenses, and ensure that the policy aligns with the overall business goals and employee needs.

1. Simplifies Expense Reporting

Employees and the finance department benefit from the simplified process, which reduces the administrative burden of tracking and approving individual meal expenses.

2. Empowers employees

Providing a meal allowance gives employees the flexibility to choose where and what they eat, catering to their dietary preferences and needs.

3. Cost Control

With predetermined limits, companies can better predict and control travel expenses, ensuring that meal spending does not exceed budgetary constraints.

Bolt Food for Business — without requesting reimbursement. You know exactly how much each person will spend — keeping travel within budget.

A courier delivering a meal to an employee on a business trip.

How to implement a travel policy with Bolt Business

After signing up for a Bolt Business account, you’ll get access to a Company Dashboard.

From this dashboard, you can:

Add employees who need to travel for work.
Set spending limits for individuals or groups of people.
View details of every order.

When your employees travel, they can charge Bolt orders to your company in the Bolt app (but only if the order aligns with your travel policy).

A Bolt Business travel policy example

One company reduced their travel expenses by 25% with Bolt Business, and you can use their strategy as a travel policy template for your own.

To give their employees convenient travel, they set up their travel policy in the following way:

When booking a ride, employees must provide an expense code in the Bolt app.
There’s a single spending limit for the group of employees (rather than individual limits).
All employees have the option to use electric scooters and e-bikes.

Here’s how the travel policy looks in their dashboard. 👇

Bolt Business travel policy examples

With Bolt Business, you can implement as many travel policies as needed and assign them to relevant team members. You can also restrict travel to specific days, times, and locations.

Sign up with Bolt Business to create an employee travel policy

Bolt Business makes managing car travel easier for Travel Managers, business travellers, and your organisation as a whole.

You get complete control and visibility from a single dashboard while your employees get the convenience, reliability, and flexibility they need when travelling for work.

Create an account for your company online today.

Keep travel within budget: the complete travel policy guide

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