8 Key Components of Your Company’s Business Travel Policy

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In our ever-changing and fast-paced world of business travel, policies have become a controversial topic. Business travel policies are put in place to make sure an employee of a business have a clear understanding of their entitlements and requirements when travelling. Policies are put in place for a few of the following reasons:

• To safeguard the wellbeing, comfort, safety, and security of employees
• Consolidate expenditure to obtain discounted rates
• Communicate commitments to sustainability and environmental issues
• Secure the highest level of service at lowest possible cost

They are put in place to protect the employee and employer alike. Travel policies usually cover the following components

1. Spend Regulation

When employees are booking travel, businesses will be looking to regulate the amount they spend. There are a few obvious reasons behind regulation of spending, the first and most obvious being the financial cap. A business no matter how big or small does not want to be running up high-cost bills on first class travel and accommodation when it’s not needed. A spending cap will also teach employees to be more economical with their travel as having a budget to stick to will encourage people to search for the best deals.

On the flip side of this a budget will also let the employee know what limits they are confined to. For example, if an individual is quite cost efficient with their travel and they have budget left they may upgrade their travel to first class or a more comfortable hotel.

2. Time of Travel Restrictions

Travel time restrictions are usually put in place to safeguard the employee. You will often find that cheaper travel options, especially trains, are cheaper off-peak. This means after the daily rush of people, tickets are offered at a lower price. However, concerns can arise when safeguarding is an issue. For example is a train ticket is cheaper at 11pm this could affect the employee’s safety considerably as opposed to travelling at 4pm. This is the reason travel time restrictions are put into place.

3. Class Restrictions

Class restrictions are pretty self explanatory. Reverting back to spend regulation we can clearly see that employees may want to restrict certain classes to save money. First class upgrades are usually up to 200% the price of a standard ticket and if a business wants to get an employee from A to B the cheapest and safest way they may place a class restriction on the booking policy. We can also look at this in a different light. For example if a company director is promised to travel first class as part of their job perk then all lower class tickets may be restricted for ease of booking.

4. Methods of Transport

In a travel policy a company can decide whether to restrict or only allow certain types of transport. They may want to do this for multiple reasons. For example they may want to restrict the option to book travel by taxi and hire car because they believe their employees could find more economical way to travel on something like public transport. Alternatively if a company has a lot of long-haul destinations they may want to only allow certain types of transport like flight to ensure a speedy journey.

5. Taxi Regulation

If a business thinks its employees are taking unnecessary journeys in taxis then they have the option to restrict the booking of taxis in certain areas or as a whole. For example if employees are taking taxis to walk half a mile this may be considered unnecessary. Also, employees could be taking taxis to destinations when they could be taking a cheaper more economical travel option such as the bus or train.

6. Fuel Usage

A business may want to limit the amount of fuel an employee uses. They may want to do this so that they know the employee is making proper use of the the fuel granted to he or she. For example an employee may choose to take the car on a long haul journey as this is the type of transport they prefer to use but the company may not want to spend money on fuel and prefer employees to travel other cheaper methods.

7. Time of Booking Restrictions

In some travel policies there are restrictions when an employee can actually book their travel. This means that if an employee was to book travel a few days before the journey instead of a couple of week then this will affect how much the company has to pay. Companies will always be looking for ways to save money when moving their employees about and booking early will count towards that.

8. Proximity to Meeting Venue

When travelling to a meeting an employee would be advised to book a hotel within ease of access of the venue. However some employees may want to choose comfort over proximity to the meeting venue. Restricting this in a business travel policy will make sure that the employee can only book a hotel within close proximity to the meeting venue. This is done because if a hotel were to be booked far away, this would incur other necessary costs to travel to and from the venue.