Every company has its own unique business travel program but not every company gets the most out of it. When it comes to potentially costly elements like managing workforce travel, booking hotels and staying within the travel and expense policy, ensuring the program is as efficient as possible is key.
When a company does achieve total harmony, everyone involved in the process of booking accommodations and traveling for work is that much happier. In fact, the savings alone can get rid of a lot of headaches caused by unruly and mismanaged programs. Most CFOs don’t even place cost controls on their organisations’ business travel despite the fact that it can account for 10 percent or more of their OpEx.
Are you looking for a business travel app that will streamline your company's hotel bookings? Get in touch with one of our experts today to learn how Roomex can help.
While some companies may look to other areas within the organisation to find savings towards business travel, there are three places in the program that should be evaluated first:
1. The rate of non-compliance with the travel and expense policy
When done right, business travel programs are simple to manage from a financial standpoint. If business hotel booking rates are averaging more than the budget has allotted, one of the common culprits is a lack of an enforceable travel and expense policy.
If there are just a few members on the team who need to travel for work, it’s easy to let them book their accommodations themselves. But as the program and the company scale, that type of strategy will only lead to chaos. Are people spending more than they should? How much are they overspending by? Who are the repeat offenders?
When you don’t have tight control over the booking process, it’s tough to enforce the policy and answering those types of questions becomes difficult. It’s why many organisations leverage the simplicity of business hotel booking software. Solutions like Roomex ensure that regardless of who uses it to book accommodations, the pricing and location guidelines set out by the business to achieve profitability are always met.
2. Potential missed savings from hotel room rates
We hate to break it to you, but if you’re booking business travel through a consumer website like Booking.com, then you’re doing it wrong. Hotel chains mark up consumer rooms but generally give preferential financial treatment to corporate customers that look for it.
These negotiated rates end up representing a significant margin of savings over the market rates, especially as the number of rooms booked moves up in scale. Roomex customers, for instance, save up to 21 percent on the price of a room – that totalled €1.17M in savings alone during Q4 2018.
By working with a business hotel booking platform that aggregates the best rates for over 1.2 million rooms globally, businesses can find the right room in the perfect location while still managing to save on rates.
3. Time lost from managing travel expenses
You may take a photo of each receipt and store them via an app, or you could staple each receipt to a sheet of paper and hand that in for invoicing. Whichever method your company uses to manage expenses, there’s a strong likelihood that it’s a drain on everyone’s time.
And it doesn’t take an entire finance team to figure out that time equals money.
Business travel is time consuming enough as it is. Wasting the hours of travellers, bookers and finance personnel with a never-ending stream of expenses is sure-fire way to sustain an inefficient, resource-draining business travel program.
Roomex gives its users a single line of credit that they can use to book hotels. Business travellers don’t have to worry about tracking expenses on the road, while bookers and finance only have to manage one monthly invoice. Not bad for a free business hotel booking platform, right?
Don’t waste time looking for savings in other areas
Business travel doesn’t have to cost a company an arm and a leg from all of its founders. Enforce policies that are in place to keep spending in line with projections, avoid overpaying for the same hotel rooms you can get at cost and cut out the inefficient parts of the process. It’s all that simple with Roomex.
Are you looking to streamline your company's business hotel bookings? Get in touch with one of our experts today to learn how Roomex can help.
