Is That an Unabridged Dictionary or Your Travel Policy?

Creating a slimmer, more modern guide to getting there.  

There’s a good chance you were instrumental in crafting your company’s travel manual. There’s an equally good chance you haven’t read it cover to cover in quite some time.  

Unfortunately, there’s a 100% chance your travelers haven’t read it all.  

There’s a reason for that: Travel policies are often long-winded enough to make most readers heavy-lidded. What are meant to be simple, helpful, instructional guides about the best way for Employee A to get to Point B, end up being some sort of magnum opus packed with every procedure, policy, restriction, and requirement a committee could ever come up with.  

And if that’s the case, how are employees supposed to pick their way through it, let alone follow the rules cleverly hidden inside? After all, they’ve got jobs to do and job-related trips to plan.  

But don’t get me wrong: Pulling together a plethora of policies your company has been following for years, then trying to parse your way through the policies that sprung up out of the pandemic like cows in a tornado, is not easy. No wonder the rules book starts to read (and weigh) like an MBA-level economics textbook.  

Modern travelers need a modern experience, and that begins with reimagined travel policies. Just imagine, for example, if there was a better balance between traveler well-being and the overall performance of your travel program. Or if all travel was purposeful travel. Of if you could get all your execs to see how a positive traveler experience (safe, simple, flexible, and personalized) equates to a successful business.   

A recent SAP Concur travel policies webinar helps put it all into perspective. In less than 30 minutes, it shifts prevailing corporate policy from status-quo, rules-heavy travel manuscripts to simple guides that make it easy for travelers to do the right thing. Instead of leaning on regulations (they’re in there, of course, this is a policy manual after all), they help travelers the way they want to be helped – with intuitive tools and engaging communication that leads them to their best travel decisions.  

And you know what? This doesn’t just help the traveler, it helps the business. When policy moves away from DOs and DON’Ts and instead becomes a living, breathing guide, travelers naturally gravitate toward using your booking tool, calling your agency, selecting your preferred suppliers, and so on.  

Like you, modern travelers don’t want to told what to do. They want to be heard, and they want to be helped.  

When you do that, you can write a travel policy that’s readable and relatable – one that’s not only easy to follow, it actually fits in your carry-on.  

Watch the webinar, and take a few minutes to see how companies are approaching modern travel policy. You’ll see that you don’t have to wedge in every word in the world to get it to work.