17 Key Features in a Business Travel Management System

Consider your travel management system as the backbone for all business travels. It will provide your travel planning all the support it needs.

Since this is so important, you will want to make sure you choose the right platform to use for traveling in your company.

What is a method for travel management?

A program of travel management allows managers to book, monitor, and evaluate travel in the industry. A travel management system usually refers to a network that offers a stock of flights, travel policy, and documents, but this also applies to the entire process of handling business trips.

Key features in a travel management system

It is essential to understand the most impactful features when comparing travel management systems. Here are the elements that can aid you in safely, efficiently, and economically managing travel.

1. Customizable travel policies

A transport strategy is one of the main characteristics of a travel management system. Even when you book on behalf of passengers through office managers and transport directors, you still need to have the travel plan on the same platform for managers.

There are several different criteria for you to customize your in-app policy:

• Individual policies for specific travelers (such as c-level or a department that must book last-minute flights often)
• Global systems for nightly hotel rate
• Nightly hotel rate by city
• Comprehensive national and international flight price programs
• The high price of travel on certain routes
• Total number of days available for early reservations
• Global maximum train cost
• Maximum train cost for particular directions

The travel management system will empower you to customize the travel plan, so it works and lives any time anyone books a ride. You do have it right there in your booking app, where it matters most, rather than a travel plan that sits on a bland file.

2. Customizable approval workflows

What if you have to book a trip outside of your policy? Ever thought about it?

Your travel system should also include authorization workflows within the application, to allow the person booking a ride, should anything not be protected in law, to demand permission and to save his or her travel information (rather than submitting an e-mail and wasting all their hard work on the right route). You should be able to establish the acceptance workflows if you wish, as separate approvers should be selected from different teams, and the strictness rate changed.

Is it essential to authorize all trips or trips that struggle from the policy, or are those passengers just booked? You should include comprehensive customization of your travel management system.

3. Extensive inventory

The workflows of regulation and authorization are very relevant for maintaining consistency with travel around the clock. Your exposure to supply is the same, though. If you use low-cost accommodation and flight operators travel management system, there is no great opportunity to save money. You’re wise to make these accessible, especially when you consider that millennium’s book budget options.

4. Support included at no additional cost

Payment is an old school and very high for every call for assistance. The assistance should not include additional fees on your travel management system. So you realize what you pay for precisely, and at the end of the month, there are no surprises. Furthermore, travelers can receive assistance if they need it without worrying that anybody can make a range of support calls for financial support.

5. No redirects

It’s irritating if you book a business trip and get diverted. It can also be a bit nerve-wracking, as you’re not sure if you’re going to be referred to this new vendor.

For business travel, redirects are not only unpleasant, but they also make it impossible to monitor your business travel. You must scour the internet at the end of the month to collect all of your invoices. At all times, stop it.

6. Travel spend reporting

The opportunity to comment on business travel is one of the essential features of any travel management system. Here are a few items that you want to track:

• Travel spend by the duration
• Travel spend by department or team
• Amount of travel spend booked out of policy
• Travel pay by project or client or event
• Amount of travel spent on hiring

This means, of course, that you must be able to add labels and tags for trips as well as generating reports.

7. Consolidated invoicing

Book business trips in one place are the most comfortable way to track your business journey. Most travel management systems do not, though, function as one unified retailer, and you still have a ton of invoices. Choose a plan that consolidates all your monthly travel to a single seller’s invoice to save time and effort on business travel. You’re going to love the finance team.

8. Review the status of all trips in one place

A travel management system will simplify travel planning. Let’s see how it’s in a case in real life. Twenty travelers will claim that they are supposed to travel to the next activity for each.

As a travel planner, the travel management system should be open and available …

• Who has successfully booked their trip within the policy
• Who is requesting an out-of-policy booking and why
• Who has a planned trip (they have saved an itinerary but have still not made a reservation)
• Who hasn’t booked a trip

You need to know what happens when you are responsible for booking travel or helping passengers book their journey. You need an instant overview so that you can find out which travelers need additional help.

For a fact, when you book tours, you will want to get confirmation, itinerary information, cancelation e-mails, etc. from one central location.

9. Easy booking, including self-booking for travelers

Although you do not intend to make travelers book for themselves, for the workers responsible for booking trips, you still want a seamless booking process and a better UX.

When you plan to make your self-reservation, you choose a tourism management system that travelers enjoy, which is pleasant to use and satisfies their needs and supports them when they need it.

10. Methods of transportation that matter to you

You plan to have planes, accommodation, and most likely vehicles in your travel management system. What about trains? When trains are a common way of traveling for your workers, you should choose a travel management system for them.

Why is the business frequently utilizing travel approaches (and even host sites such as Airbnb)?

So you can merge your company journeys to an easy to handle and track single platform.

11. Mobile app for travelers on the go

I accept that it’s almost 2020. Do we have to verify that a mobile app exists? Yeah, we have to. Many travel management systems do not have native mobile applications and have clunky or difficult-to-use software. You must access their software to check the process before embarking on your entire team in a new travel management system.

12. Saving in-progress bookings and collaborating

Collaborative bookings are linked to sure of the features previously mentioned (such as permissions and the ability to check incomplete reservations).

It is nevertheless such an important feature that independently, it should be discussed. In several cases, the ability to book together can be helpful:

• Your CEO choose a flight and hotel and wants you to finalize it
• Travelers are allowed to choose the trips they want but not complete bookings (so you complete it after they pick their options)
• A trip for many travelers has to be reviewed, so you need to save and double-check before you finish it
• A potential hire, client, or managed talent choose their trip details, and the main office books it

There are endless possibilities. You should be able to do this with a trip booking just like a draft report can be saved, cooperate with others, and come back late to it.

13. Easy to see what’s in and out of policy when searching

Don’t you think it would be lame if your passengers could not say that a hotel is out of business until they’re excited to reserve it? That’d be awful, yeah. The passengers should be able to see whether it’s a hotel or a plane or train before even tapping on anything else.

14. Expense tool integration

You should integrate your travel management system with your expense system.

If no existing integrations are available, check that the travel management system provides at least one of them:

• Offers an external API so your development team can integrate it with your expense tool
• Offers custom integration services

15. Save traveler information

It doesn’t take 2 hours to book business travel. Through storing the details of each traveler in your travel management system (including legal name, country, and several travel documents, birthday, etc.), it can take a lot less time — including minutes.

16. Save loyalty points

Every organization has a different reward program. Many businesses do not authorize passengers to collect points on their own rewards cards but rather encourage the client to be added to the business card for the company to receive the benefits.

Anyway, use a travel management system to save the numbers of these programs. Every time you book, travelers don’t have to enter them. And if only points are permitted in your company’s ledger, then an assistant or manager may insert the numbers of each traveler’s plan in the profile of each traveler.

17. No long term contracts

You shouldn’t be pressured into using it if you don’t like the travel management system.

At the end of long sales cycles, the old way is to snack champagne bottles. Try a system; see if it’s a pleasure and leave if it’s not. Check that you do not get locked up when you vet travel management platform.

The system you use for reserving and managing travel can have a significant impact on your travel manager experience and on every employee who works.

Learn more ways to improve your travel management process and systems with our new guide.