How Far Will You Take Travel in a Post-Pandemic World?

You kept your business on its feet while keeping employees safe, happy, healthy, and productive. You figured out working from home and how to turn your company on a dime when COVID-19 restrictions threatened to turn it on its head. You reeled in your traveling workforce and made the best of video conferencing.

Nice job. Seriously.

But now what? How are you going graduate from survival to industry leadership? How are you going to get back out on the streets again, so you can stay out in front?

How? You’re going to put travel back on the map, and you’re going to do things differently. Why? Because the old way of getting from A to B doesn’t work anymore, and – this is especially important – everyone is watching. Your C-suite, your travelers, your customers, your competition – they’re all waiting to see how you adapt to the next era of corporate travel. How you make it safer. How you make it more efficient and convenient. How you make it sustainable. How, in other words, you re-establish business momentum by rethinking business travel.

So, what do you do first?

Travel managers like you, who are adept at rolling up their sleeves, will say it comes down to two things: Compliance and flexibility. You have to give travelers the room to plan trips the way they want, so they can feel safe and therefore productive. You also want to give them the freedom to book travel in the way that works best for them – on the apps they love and with suppliers they prefer. This enhances the on-the-road experience and, again, leads to positive and more productive travel.

But flexibility, even now, must certainly have its limits. You have to be able to control costs, forecast expenses, oversee itineraries, and manage duty of care. These things haven’t changed and, in fact have become even more important as we creep out from behind COVID-19. The rules, regulations, and restrictions we followed before are even more constricting now, making compliance all the more critical.

Balancing compliance and flexibility might feel like a tightrope act, but organizations who’ve mastered it are building trust with their travelers and driving savings to their bottom line. And they’re doing it by following tips laid out in this recent compliance tipsheet – tips such as:  

• Adding preapprovals to the process.
• Using tools to capture direct bookings.
• Taking a closer look at mileage and working closer with finance to make sure critical charges are getting the right scrutiny.
• Tracking and reporting it all, so they know where they stand with the budget and with various and ever-changing regulations.

Businesses on the border between compliance and flexibility are tapping into technology to manage travel in ways they couldn’t have imagined before. They’re quite literally shaping the future, and you’re invited to join them.

How far will you go?     

For more information, read the compliance tip sheet, or visit our business travel management page.