Off The MRKT

Business trips can cost companies a lot of money. Whilst most companies try to set an allowance for them and their employees, it’s inevitable that people will spend as much of this allowance as possible. You can set a very low budget to try to discourage excessive spending, but this could result in poor travel conditions that make your employees feel undervalued. As a result, you need to find other ways decrease spending. Here are just a few tips for keeping business travel costs down whilst still allowing you and your employees to travel in comfort.

Book in advance – not last minute

Whilst you can get last minute deals on flight and hotels, there’s never any guarantee on this – hotels and flights could become booked up forcing you to resort to more expensive options. You’re much better off booking in advance, allowing you to take advantage of early bird deals. Some airlines such as Etihad Airways also allow you to pay for flights in instalments when booking ahead, helping to make it more affordable. You can take control of booking these flights or you can try encourage your employees to book by a certain date to ensure that they don’t end up paying premium fees out of your travel budget.

Take advantage of group discounts

When it comes to group business travel, it’s worth looking out for group discounts. Accommodation such as this hotel near Taylor County Expo Center, Abilene, Texas offers group discounts to those travelling on business purposes – this could be useful if you’ve got a trade fair lined up. There are meanwhile some airlines that also offer group discounts for those travelling on business purposes.

Encourage employees to save money on trips with incentives

Many employees won’t see the point of saving money when given an allowance. However, you can encourage employees to spend less on their allowance by offering incentives to do so. This could include giving a bonus to the employee that saves the most on travel expenses. You could even roll over some the savings into a joint account that is then shared amongst everyone at the end of the year – your employees may feel guilty for spending all their allowance if they know that it will affect the rest of the team’s overall annual bonus.

Consider whether you really need to travel

Business travel is sometimes necessary for certain events, but there can be other times when it’s an unnecessary luxury. Conferences and meetings can now be conducted via video-communication – this could allow you to host presentations to people on the other side of the country (or indeed the other side of the world) without having to do any travelling. The glamour of travelling can be exciting for you and your employees, but you may not actually be achieving anything that you can’t do from your desk.

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