If you’re in charge of organising construction travel plans for your company, your goal is simple. You need to book clean, comfortable rooms for employees to relax in after a long day on the road - or, in some cases, building the roads. You have to ensure they can get a good meal - and often a late check-in too. Sounds reasonably straightforward, right?
Obstacles faced by construction travel managers
Wrong. With budget restrictions and policy limitations, as well as the need to keep track of employees and expenses, this can be a tedious task for travel managers. But now, these high-stress, time-consuming headaches can be eliminated with one convenient, centralised tool.
Roomex is the only platform built specifically for workforce travel. Designed with hard-hat workers in mind, Roomex makes travel management as simple as it should be.
Let’s run through some of the most vexing headaches Roomex solves:
1. Finding the best rates
Those in charge of construction travel management don’t have hours to spend trawling through booking websites looking for the best deals. But they also need to keep costs down and adhere to company policy.
At Roomex, we continually and proactively source the best hotel business rates, often securing exclusive discounts of up to 25% for our users. You can also upload your own negotiated rates. This means you’ll always get value for money and can trust Roomex as your go-to booking platform.
2. Finding the right hotels
Roomex offers the largest network of workforce suitable 2, 3 and 4-star hotels. With over 650,000 to choose from, you can filter the results by location, parking facilities and on-site restaurants.
You can also add your company’s travel policy or set spending caps and location restrictions. Even if someone else is booking, Roomex gives you control.
3. Keeping T&E costs down
As well as getting great hotel rates, Roomex also saves money by increasing operational efficiency and reducing inaccurate expense claims.
Beyond this, Roomex Analytics also provides total spend visibility. This can show you how much is spent on hotels, by booker, traveller and city -powering our users to make data-backed cost-saving decisions.
So, if most of your budget is being spent at a particular hotel chain, you can look into negotiating lower rates. Or, if someone is consistently booking out-of-policy, you can find out why.
4. Ensuring employees happiness
Travelling for work can be tough, so you want to make the experience as smooth as possible.
With Roomex, you can book rooms under each employee’s name to avoid confusion at check-in. Alternatively, you can set spending caps and allow employees to choose their own rooms. This gives them personal choice, while also ensuring they stay within budget.
Roomex’s reservation checks also guarantee a stress-free check-in and with each hotel stay billed on account, your employees don’t need to worry about payment after a long day on-site.
5. Fulfilling your duty of care
It can be hard to keep track of where each and every employee is staying on any given night. Many travel managers manually fill out spreadsheets to keep tabs on everyone. But with changing schedules and extended projects, it’s easy to make mistakes.
Roomex eliminates this process and provides live oversight of your workforce in a user-friendly dashboard.
6. Arranging off-peak check-ins
Whether they’re working on sites, roads or in plants, many construction projects take place out-of-hours. Your employees mightn’t check in until the early hours of the morning. Through Roomex, you can secure off-peak check-ins. Our hotel support experts will also confirm this during their reservation checks, meaning you’ll never have to deal with late-night troubleshooting again.
7. Last minute bookings
With 24/7 access from wherever you are, it won’t take long to make a booking on short notice. Choose from frequently booked hotels, recently booked hotels or your list of favourites. With Roomex, you know you’re getting a great price and you don’t need to worry about any admin.
8. Charging clients for travel
When construction projects run over due to delays caused by a client, you may have to charge them for some hotel stays. This can be a major admin headache for travel managers. But, with Roomex, simply add project cost codes for these bookings. Then at the end of the month, you’ll have a consolidated invoice for the client.
9. The paperwork associated travel expenses
Whether you reimburse travel expenses or simply track them, Roomex can save you time. Billed on account, each hotel stay automatically appears in the Roomex dashboard.
Many users also take advantage of RoomexPay, which provides your workforce with prepaid cards to purchase food, fuel and other travel necessities.
For employees, this means:
- No out-of-pocket expenses
- No lengthy expense claim processes
For construction travel managers, it means:
- No manual tracking
- No false claims
- No paperwork
- None of the risks associated with company credit cards
- Full oversight of spending in real-time
10. Implementing travel policy
According to a 2015 survey, 72% of travel managers struggle to maintain compliance with their company travel policy. In Roomex, you can upload your policy, making it easy for you and your colleagues to stay within budget. Where necessary, you can even adjust your policy by location.
At Roomex, we understand that your company’s success relies on employees being out on the road. Although it can be tricky for travel managers to get the balance right, Roomex makes it easy for them to reduce costs while also keeping employees happy.
