Just because you’re a small business, that doesn’t mean your travel booking process should be chaos. Here are five small business travel booking tips for office managers.
If you’re a small or medium-sized enterprise with a core group of business Travelers, you may struggle with keeping your travel organized, efficient, productive and profitable. In some SMEs, business Travelers are left to their own devices, booking travel as they wish. This leaves accounting or management teams to then ensure that the travel doesn’t go over budget or that it’s actually a worthwhile pursuit. In other instances, an office manager may be in charge of overseeing the organization’s business travel as a whole. However, this can quickly become overwhelming for an individual who has other responsibilities on their plate.
Luckily, you have many options to make your life easier, including but not limited to affordable and autonomous solutions for SMEs made possible via evolving travel management offerings. Here are five small business travel booking tips for office managers to consider implementing.
1. Put together a travel policy.
First things first, put together a travel policy. It only needs to be as complex as your travel needs, but it should be comprehensive. Include guidelines for every step of the travel process, from deciding whether or not a trip is worth taking to reporting expenses after the fact. A travel policy should clearly let your Travelers know what’s expected of them when booking, while on the road and after the trip has commenced.
Not only will a travel policy help bring some order to what can otherwise be a chaotic process. It can also ensure that Travelers adhere to certain rules when booking travel. Likewise, it can help ensure that your trip remains within budget and any other parameters, such as if you have certain sustainability goals related to your organization’s travel.
Once you have a travel policy laid out, be sure to get management’s buy-in. Then, communicate the travel policy thoroughly to your traveling teams, along with information regarding non-compliance and resulting ramifications.
2. Bring in tools that can make booking and compliance easier.
There are plenty of travel tech tools that you can harness as an SME that can make your business Travelers’ experiences easier. For example, Spotnana is an online booking tool that offers self-service capabilities, allowing Travelers to handle much of their travel experience on their own without relying on a Travel Manager or office manager.
You might also consider bringing in platforms and apps that help you meet specific business travel goals. For instance, you might look for a solution that helps your Travelers track their business travel carbon footprint as they’re actively booking a trip so that they remain within sustainability-related parameters. Or, you might give Travelers access to an app that can track their business travel spending automatically, on the go, to alleviate the need for time-consuming expense reporting after a trip.
3. Keep your Travelers’ needs and wants in mind.
As you’re building a travel policy and choosing travel tech tools to bring into your travel process, make sure that you’re also keeping your Travelers’ needs and wants in mind. It’s the easiest way to ensure policy compliance.
This means keeping in mind Travelers’ preferred hotel chains and airlines, any preferences they may have about travel days and times, and any parts of the travel process that they find particularly onerous or disruptive to their jobs. If you can cater to their business travel needs while also making business travel as convenient for them as possible, you’re more likely to have profitable, productive business trips all around.
Don’t forget to follow up after trips, too. Make sure you’re checking in regularly with Travelers to ascertain whether or not a trip met their needs and how their travel experiences could be improved in the future.
4. Compile and keep travel data organized.
At some point, you’re going to need to make certain decisions regarding your organization’s business travel. To make those decisions, it’s best to have certain data at hand.
Maybe your organization is determining its travel budget for 2026. Maybe your organization is looking at its carbon footprint and deciding areas where teams can scale back their impact. Or maybe your organization is looking at which Travelers get the most productivity and profitability from each trip. Whatever the decision may be, having complete, accurate data regarding business travel spend, sustainability, outcomes and more can help.
As such, consider keeping on top of your travel data via automated processes, as well as travel data compilation tools like those offered by Spotnana. When it comes to interpreting and sifting through that data, consider bringing in AI tech tools that can recognize patterns that you may not automatically recognize.
5. In all things, be flexible.
As you’re looking at these business travel booking tips for office managers, you may feel as if you need to go to your desk and immediately begin setting up parameters and guidelines around your travel program. You may feel emboldened to set down strict rules regarding Traveler safety and sustainability or to slash budgets so you can afford a new travel-related tech tool.
However, before you take any drastic action, remember what is probably the most important of these business travel booking tips for office managers of all — you need to keep Travelers’ needs in mind at all times. This is going to require a bit of flexibility.
Accordingly, as you get started, don’t assume you need to craft the perfect SME travel program immediately. Take things slowly, make the right data-based decisions and watch your travel program become more efficient, convenient and productive for all involved.
Need more business travel booking tips for office managers?
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