After the pandemic, companies’ business travel has increased, and many companies have adopted travel management software to manage their bookings online.
By 2023, the corporate travel management platform market is expected to grow to $17.4 billion. Online booking business travel platforms help you manage and keep all your bookings in order.
This will give you a timely update on your trip, offer an organized itinerary, and schedule your appointments. These platforms also have advanced features that automatically plan and manage your trips and meetings, along with cancellation and refund management.
These features of online business travel booking platforms make them essential for businesses. Therefore, choosing the right booking platform for business travel for you or your employees is necessary. Let’s look at some important tips you need to remember while choosing a booking platform for your business.
Identify your business requirements
Before you start searching for the platform:
- Look inside your business first.
- Evaluate the requirement of a booking platform in your business.
- Determine what kind of features you need and what resources you already have.
This way, you will know what type of software you require for your current and future needs. While evaluating, see whether you have more of a personal use or business use for your clients or employees. This will help you gain flexibility and scalability in your business.
Check the interface of the platform
If you book business travel for any employee or yourself, you will always look for a platform with a user-friendly interface. The easy-to-use interface gives you a better travel booking experience. On easy-to-use UI/UX, employees find it convenient to check all the flights available, their approval status, etc.
Booking also becomes easy and quick according to the integrated travel policy. Furthermore, choose an online business travel booking platform that can be supported on multiple platforms to check your travel booking status from any device. Mobile apps are portable; thus, employees can quickly check their requests and status. Also, you can upload your expenses and generate booking tickets quickly from such a feasible mobile app interface.
Choose the platform with the enhanced safety feature
If you are booking with your business travel cards, you must be extra cautious with the platform. Your card has various important details which can be the subject of risk. Therefore, security should be the priority of individuals when choosing a booking platform. Some other aspects of why safety features are essential:
Location of traveler
The platform or software must have a tracking facility for the employees’ business trips. This will ensure the safety of your employees on the trip, and you can reach out to them in case of any emergency.
Safe hotel tags
A good online business travel booking platform always ensures safe and secure travel hotels. While booking business travel for owners or employees, the travel management software or platforms should blacklist sub-standard or unsafe hotel services for travelers.
Look for 24/7 support
Employees may travel day or night for their trip. To help in an emergency or in times of need, look for a platform that offers support proactively 24/7. This way, travelers can find help or assistance while on their journey or looking for accommodation. Moreover, 24/7 assistance will help you to know the details of your trips in case you miss them. It will also suggest your routes, safe accommodations, next-day flights, etc., in no time.
Reliable customer support will enhance your traveling experience by helping you out with your needs. With a fast and better response, you can get a solution to your problem while traveling. Platform with customer support assures you that someone will contact you to encounter your issues and solve them. So, while choosing the right online business travel booking platform, always opt for the one that offers 24/7 assistance or customer support.
Evaluate the integration capability of the platform
There are times when businesses need to mix different software to create different operational functions at once. However, there is no such software that can give one solution without integration of other tools together. Therefore, people integrate different software to curate one digital solution to fulfill business needs. This makes the integration capability feature important in the business travel system.
If the booking platform has integration capability, you can integrate it with your online travel agents and travel policies. Integrating with travel policy will ensure better policy compliance while booking business travel. You can keep your services, domestic online travel agents, and local destination management organizations aligned to your preferences while booking. This will give a degree of customization, enabling you to use a booking tool merged with your system.
Consider a cost-effective booking platform
Considering cost while selecting any booking platform is a must. First, identify your budget and research the costs or charges to install the booking software on your device. Moreover, get to know if the platform company charges you a license or any monthly fee.
Usually, a one-time payment is made, while some may ask for a monthly payment or commission for training and installing software support on your device. It may cost per user, where a one-time fee can be the ideal payment period for travel businesses. The overall budget for installing a business travel system includes a one-time payment plus any installation charges. You can even buy support packages separately to enhance the booking experience. Furthermore, your priority should be to find the platform that offers certain benefits:
- No set-up charges
- No annual fees
- Use of the full system
- No monthly maintenance fee
- Unlimited agents can be added
- No or low transaction fee
Choose a platform that aids your sustainability goal
If you get business travel cards, do not use them recklessly. Always opt for eco-friendly travel options that do not harm your business’s sustainable goals. Today, approximately 2% of the global carbon emission is because of business travel. Companies book their employee’s trips much more frequently and do not choose the right means of transport that causes less impact on the environment.
Therefore, it is important for businesses to opt for more sustainable travel rather than choosing any transport they wish. An online business travel booking platform will allow travel managers to book trips, flights, or accommodations that fulfill environmental goals. It offers you options that aid the business’s sustainable goals, like carbon footprint tracking, reporting, etc.
It analyses the positive and negative environmental impact from its database and eliminates the negative impact options. This corrective action also ensures to follow the green travel policy that you integrate into the online business travel booking platform.
Key takeaways
Every employee who is traveling for business trips always needs the right booking business travel solution to have a good experience on their journey. Choosing the right platform for your booking system is essential for businesses to get rid of any third-party software, eliminate delays in booking approvals, etc.
The appropriate travel booking software allows travel managers to make lightning-fast bookings, analyze advanced travel analytics, provide emergency support, 24/7 assistance, or customer support via chat or email, etc. It also ensures the travel policy compliance with employees’ booking. Therefore, follow the above-given tips to choose an online business travel booking platform for your business that suits you and your business functionalities.
