Corporate travel program: Complete guide for creation and implementation

Whether for sales, training, client meetings, or in-house events, corporate travel is an integral part of operations for any growing business. 

But left unorganized, travel can be a burden on both employee and employer. Making travel arrangements is often a hassle for employees, who may or may not be savvy bookers and who almost certainly have other priorities to tend to. And without formalized policies, travel-management software, or third-party travel service providers, businesses stand to lose untold sums in lost efficiency and forgone discounts they could reap by leveraging the collective buying power of their workforce.

The fix? A comprehensive corporate travel program.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of corporate travel programs, what they entail, and how to go about building one, step by step. Let’s dive in.

What is a corporate travel program?

Corporate travel programs seek to organize and administer the travel needs of a workforce in a cost-effective, efficient, and scalable way. At their best, they encompass every aspect of corporate travel from booking flights and approval workflows to emergency preparedness and reimbursement policies. 

Corporate travel programs go beyond the policies that employees must follow while booking or seeking reimbursement for travel. They also take into account business-side factors, such as the technological infrastructure required to administer the program to your entire workforce and strategies to track and manage costs. Often, corporate travel programs involve outsourcing booking to third-party services that have access to discounts on air travel and hotels. 

Usually, it is full-time travel managers who are responsible for overseeing the travel program. They may institute the policies, communicate them to employees, and oversee the technology and vendors associated with running the program. But travel touches a number of departments, including IT, accounting and finance, HR, and even risk/compliance.

In short, corporate travel programs amount to an organization-wide effort to make business trips easy, predictable affairs—and as safe, efficient, and cost-effective as possible for employees and employers alike.

3 benefits of corporate travel programs

Creating and implementing a corporate travel program can do wonders for your business. Here are a few ways you stand to benefit from implementing one. 

1. Save time and resources

Companies with corporate travel plans often take care of booking and making travel arrangements for employees, which saves them time and frees them up to focus on their day-to-day responsibilities. Even without booking services, travel programs streamline the booking process through dedicated booking software or clear-cut processes and instructions that make travel planning more routine and predictable. 

2. Keep employees safe

The same risks that apply to personal travel are present for business travel, such as weather disruptions, geopolitical risks, sickness, and other unforeseen emergencies. Travel programs account for these factors and address them proactively by establishing safety protocols easily accessible to employees in one, centralized location. 

Some business travel programs aim to ensure round-the-clock connectivity for employees on the road so they have a way to get help if they need it. Many feature 24/7 contact lines that employees can reach out to in an emergency, for example.

3. Improve the bottom line

Imagine if every employee booked travel on their favorite airline or at their favorite hotel chain with no guidance around costs or vendors. Expenses would be through the roof. 

A corporate travel program heads off these and other pitfalls, saving money by standardizing travel according to policies or booking procedures that have been vetted for cost effectiveness. 

Travel programs often entail booking with preferred providers for discounts. And by tracking employee and departmental travel spend with the right software, administrators can more easily track travel outlays and make changes to the policy as they analyze spend.

How to create and launch a corporate travel program for your company

It might seem like a daunting task, but building a corporate travel program is achievable with the right approach, tools, and buy-in from internal stakeholders. Here’s how you can go about it, step by step.

Step 1: Understand your company’s needs

Not all corporate travel programs are created equal, and for good reason. Large enterprises have different needs than startups in the early stages of growth, for instance. With that in mind, there’s no one-size-fits all program to copy/paste inside your business, though there are a few industry-standard practices that make building one easier. 

Start off by understanding what exactly your company needs. Begin by mapping the infrastructure in place already, your traveling workforce’s needs, and the scope of the project ahead of you. 

You can ask:

• Who is traveling? How often are they hitting the road, where are they going, and how are they getting there? 
• What degree of freedom do employees currently have in booking, and what budget restrictions are they under?
• What are employees’ current pain points? 
• Do you have processes and software in place for booking, approvals, reimbursements, etc.?

Step 2: Choose a travel model—mandated, flexible, or hybrid

Once you have a sense of the travel needs of your business, you’ll want to take a step back and decide on the way your company handles travel overall. 

Generally speaking, there are three ways of going about it: a mandated model, a flexible/open-booking model, or a hybrid model that combines the two.

• The mandated model forgoes employee flexibility in favor of strict policies and reporting requirements, dedicated travel providers, and clearly specified payment methods. It usually means partnering with an outside travel management company to handle employee booking. This method offers the best way to manage and track expenses, but employees will have less say in how they get from point A to B. And they can forget about accruing travel rewards on a corporate card.
• The flexible/open-booking model prioritizes employee choice and autonomy, allowing them to make their own good-faith decisions when booking travel. The policy usually stresses cost consciousness, but defers to employees to make cost-effective decisions as they book. This model is more difficult to track and may miss out on discounts available through third-party service providers.
• A hybrid model borrows from aspects of both options. It may allow employees to make booking arrangements on their own, but only using certain software or payment methods, for instance.

Step 3: Define the roles involved in travel management

Travel is cross-functional by nature so you’ll want to make sure roles are clearly identified and assigned upfront. 

Start at the top, because executive-level buy-in will be critical to getting the program up and running company-wide. You’ll also want to get regional or branch leaders on board—anyone in a senior position whose managerial muscle might be needed to drive implementation and oversight.

You’ll want to sort out particulars like approval flows and manager vs. employee responsibilities. What types of prior approvals do employees need and from who? How will different departments budget for their annual travel? Who will have final sign-off on annual travel budgets? 

Step 4: Build out your risk management policies and procedures

Companies are obligated to provide for the welfare of their employees while they travel (it’s known as the “duty of care”). They can do so with a well-thought-out risk management policy that evaluates and monitors travel risks, plans for emergencies, and provides resources for employees when trips go awry.

Risk management involves making assessments that calculate the potential risks associated with traveling to a given destination. But even if the risk is assessed as low, you’ll want to plan for any manner of unforeseen happenings—from once-in-a-century weather emergencies to hospitalizations to incidents of theft or violence. 

As mentioned above, some companies find it prudent to give employees access to 24/7 travel assistance lines or other means of support they can access in a pinch.

Step 5: Search for suppliers

Whether you’re opting for a flexible or mandated travel model, or a mix of both, you’re likely to need a range of new software and services. 

Many firms opt for a travel management system that allows them to centralize booking, approvals, and expense reporting in one place. Corporate travel programs that lean more toward mandated booking models may want to outsource to a third-party travel-management company with access to discounts.

Like any software or services purchase, shop around and compare prices and offerings. You can also see if existing providers have tools that integrate with your existing tech stack.

Step 6: Create a travel policy

Travel policies take the hard work you did in steps 1-5 and package it into easy-to-consume instructions that tell employees and managers how to book, approve, and seek reimbursement for travel. 

Travel policies usually outline:

• How to book—including guidelines around what employees can spend for flights and hotels, and any preferred vendors
• The approval process 
• Spending limits and other budgetary guidelines and considerations, including per diem and/or reimbursement policies
• Links to related policies and resources, such as emergency assistance lines and risk-management resources 

Step 7: Communicate the program to employees

Once your travel policy is finalized and approved by all the requisite stakeholders, it’s time to share it out across your organization. 

The scope and timeline of your rollout plan will depend on the size of your company, the degree to which the new policy amounts to a change in established travel practices, and how agile teams and employees tend to be about adapting to change. But as with any corporate change, err on the side of over-communicating and over-preparing. 

As a best practice, you’ll want to make sure travel policies are easily accessible for employees. Consider adding them to your company intranet and working them into onboarding materials for new hires. 

Here are a few other steps you can take to make sure the policy lands well among employees:

• Make the timelines and policies accessible ahead of the change.
• Host training sessions. 
• Meet one on one with managers of teams with high travel frequency.
• Send company-wide communications.
• Create a dedicated place to receive and respond to questions. Consider posting the answers publicly as an FAQ.
• Decide on the 3-5 most important need-to-knows and prioritize those in your messaging.

Step 8: Rely on travel management software

Managing your corporate travel program is easier if you have the right software to do so. Travel management software procured in Step 5 can help you centralize the end-to-end booking, expense management, and compliance monitoring within one tool. To help with adoption, make sure employees have the right training, documentation, and support they need to get up to speed on the tool. 

Most importantly, use the software to your advantage. The best platforms allow you to glean insights into your company’s travel needs, costs, and procedures. Leveraging them can help you iterate over time to hone your corporate travel policy into an effective operation that strikes the ideal balance between a satisfactory employee booking and reimbursement experience, cost control tool, and management platform.

3 tips to make sure your corporate travel program is a success

Launching a corporate travel program is a large undertaking, but there are a few small steps you can take to make sure it’s a success that improves over time.

1. Make sure policies are both comprehensive and approachable—and fill in gaps as you go

Investing time upfront in crafting policies that take into account all eventualities, processes, and needs can help to ensure employees and managers alike are as autonomous as possible as their travel needs arise. Before you launch, consider testing the policy with a pilot group to see what questions or concerns people have.

Even so, you’ll likely find that there’s room for improvement. Don’t be afraid to tweak your policies as you go, both from a policy standpoint and a communications perspective. To the latter, you may find that the correct information is available, but it’s not resonating. Experiment with alternative formats—video instructions, FAQs, short messages in your company messaging tool—to see what makes the information as sticky as possible.

2. Collect feedback, measure results, and iterate accordingly

One way to ensure your corporate travel program is as good as it can: collecting feedback on a regular basis. There are a number of ways to go about this, from focus groups to surveys to real-time in-person feedback via informal chats. The insights you glean can be used to make the policy work better for you, employees, and the business.

Similarly, you can set key performance indicators (KPIs) for factors like employee satisfaction or costs. Performance against these KPIs can show you where you should focus your efforts to improve the program going forward. 

3. Use automation tools to improve efficiency

Audit your process for unnecessary manual inputs that you can improve with software, looking for tools that streamline booking, approvals, expense reporting, and more. 

Corporate travel program FAQs

How does a corporate travel program ensure compliance with travel policies?

Travel managers can pursue a multi-pronged strategy to maintain compliance with corporate travel programs, which includes running internal communications campaigns, conducting training and information sessions, publishing accessible resources, conducting regular audits, and using tools that standardize various aspects of the program like booking or approvals. 

Who handles corporate travel?

It varies, but corporate travel is typically owned by HR or Finance, and administered by travel managers in combination with outside service providers. Some firms empower employees to book most of their travel according to a set of budgetary guidelines or ethics codes, while others centralize booking under one team or service provider to maximize cost control and consistency. 

What does a corporate travel planner do? 

Corporate travel planners book and plan business trips for employees. Depending on the scope of their role and their seniority, they may also manage and implement corporate travel policies, manage relationships with vendors and service providers, perform risk assessments, approve expenses, and manage travel budgets. Overall, they aim to provide seamless and safe travel experiences for employees while managing costs and risks for the business. 

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.