As many countries continue to flatten the COVID-19 curve, and keep it flat, some markets around the globe have slowly started to open and the new seeds of travel have begun. Before the COVID-19 situation, more than half of business travelers booked their journeys outside the company’s travel policy program.
As many countries continue to flatten theCOVID-19curve, and keep it flat, some markets around the globe have slowly started to open and the new seeds of travel have begun. Before the COVID-19 situation, more than half of business travelers booked their journeys outside the company’s travel policy program. The future will likely be very different. Employees will need to book travel through their companies preferred channels to ensure their safety and stay up to date on the situation in their destination of travel.
Not only will business travel in the future be extensively monitored by travel managers, but corporate policies should be agile enough to evolve within a constantly changing environment. For instance, if the risk level for a country increases, every trip to that destination may have to go through the approval of director-level staff, HR or the appropriate risk management process. To efficiently manage this, corporations will require tools that can react in real-time. Pragmatic innovation is now the key.
To help corporations define the right set of guidelines for business travel in a COVID-19 era, we’ve identified three top tips. These tips aim to help design a comprehensive corporate policy, establish a strategy to manage it, and ensure that corporations have the right tools to do so.
Identifying the needs and establishing goals
The first step for designing a travel policy is understanding the needs of your travelers and the business. You can do this by conducting an audit, which will highlight what employees do and don’t like about current travel policies. You can assess business priorities and get CEOs, COOs and CFOs aligned on a shared goal, so that there are no conflicting views about employee safety, growth or cost minimization. Also, since corporate travel management works on multiple complexities, you can answer employees’ questions and concerns preemptively to create comprehensive coverage as a blueprint for clarity.
Getting the message across
After laying the foundations of your travel policy, it is time to work out the details before delivery. Clarity, as we mentioned, should be the mainstay. Employees should be able to easily comprehend the policy. A short and crisp document has a better chance of engagement, encouraging travel compliance. The policy should be consistent with the company culture, across teams and offices – meaning pre-defined travel-class and hotel stays. Also, the policy should minimize travel spends and at the same time consider traveler well-being to make employees feel safe, valued and boost productivity. While tapping relevant channels for distribution, you can ensure all employees read the policy cytric Travel & Expense has the capability to embed the document into your system so that compliance is ensured across the booking process.
Adapting your technology to reflect your policy
After establishing and distributing your travel policy, it is time for execution. You can put it into action by investing in the right tools and reduce delays as well as pain points – increasing productivity, compliance and your overall bottom line. Using a fully integrated solution like Amadeus cytric Travel & Expense you will incorporate everything that your employees need, from flights and hotels to rail tickets and car rentals. Since they won’t be juggling multiple platforms, you can set parameters for each field that aligns with your policy. With an end-to-end booking and expense management, you can enable cost control and streamline processes, as well as traveler care. And lastly, by offering a flexible travel booking experience on mobile via one single app , employees will be able to search, book, check, modify & cancel itineraries and expenses all in one application.
Once a cohesive corporate policy is in place, there are also additional steps corporations can take to manage travel in a COVID-19 environment.
- Only allow a maximum number of employees per flight. Companies can consider activating and/or reducing the number of employees that can be on the same flight. This will help reduce the risk to employees and the company.
- Dynamically create custom regions based on the reported health risk. Travel managers need to be in the know of where potential outbreaks may occur so they can adapt their policies and employees can create their travel arrangements in line with the company policy. To do this, travel managers can create a one-time custom region and set this region as a destination with restriction policies that need to be implemented. It’s then possible to update the custom region (by city, country or region) once and have the settings incorporated with the new destinations that have been added. This allows travel managers to quickly and easily update travel requirements as the situation changes, all while ensuring employee remain compliant to the policy defined.
- Set up guided booking flows depending on destination. Companies can rethink what should be booked online or offline with assistance of an expert agent. For example, if an employee is looking to book a long-haul multi-destination trip, they may want assistance to ensure they can comply to each country’s requirement. Additionally, companies should consider all forms of transportation or even block travel to specific destinations. Having a single shopping experience that guides travelers through the companies preferred booking flow will reduce anxiety and confusion for travelers while shopping all while ensuring compliance with the travel policy.
- Allow travelers to find the most secure route with minimum stops. Companies can reduce exposure by allowing employees to search for only direct/non-stop flights or a specific ‘via’ city that has better and faster sanitization checks at airports. By reducing the number of stops and connection time spent in airports, companies can reduce the risk of exposure to public areas.
- Add hotels with strict cleaning protocols or ones close to the office. Review the hotels in your preferred selection, activate the hotels that follow professional sanitization norms and visually call these out to facilitate the shopping experience. Also, remove the hotels that have had known sanitization issues by leveraging User Generated Content directly from employee feedback. Hotels closer to the office mean less transportation time which also means less risk.
So, as and when business travel picks up, it’s the responsibility of corporations around the world to have a well-structured and flexible business travel policy in place to ensure the company and its travelers are equipped for a COVID-19 world.
Now is the time for organizations to take steps in understanding the needs of travelers and the business. They can assess business priorities, get CXOs aligned on a shared goal and answer employees’ questions preemptively to create a comprehensive coverage. Our cytric Travel & Expense tool can help integrate the changes to travel policy into any corporate system so that compliance is ensured during future booking processes.
COVID-19 has permanently changed how we live and move; corporations can harness this opportunity to rethink travel.
To find out more, download your guide for a winning travel policyhere .
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