There are a few important factors to consider when choosing a corporate travel agency, whether you are unsatisfied with your present agency or want to employ one for the first time. But before looking for a corporate travel service, decide what your needs are as a company.
Raise the following questions to get your answer!
• Why do you need business travel services when you can do it yourself?
• Which activities would you like the organization to offer?
• Do you wish to reduce your corporate travel expenses?
• Would you like to improve the way that workers schedule their travel?
• Do you require valuable insights into trip and cost information?
It would be easier to analyze and choose the finest corporate travel agency if you knew what you truly wanted to achieve by working with one.
You require a blend of human service and technologies in your business travel agency to provide your workers with a flawless tourism experience and your administration with financial management.
The following are some important criteria to consider while selecting travel agents in Lexington:
1. Personalized client assistance
On a work journey, your staff could run across various emergencies. For example, traveling might need to understand the fastest way to get to work or the best public transportation option. They require on-demand, individualized help in these situations.
As a result, you should determine whether the travel agent provides 24/7/365 assistance, which is essential when your employees travel for work, particularly internationally. They must be reachable through several methods, including chats, phone calls, and various languages, particularly during emergencies.
You must also ensure they give you access to a dedicated corporate travel agent who is familiar with your company’s demands and can offer your staff the finest choices in the event of trip delays or rebooking. When questioned about the trip, they ought to be able to give precise answers. You may read customer feedback to learn more about their customer support or ratings on their corporate website.
2. Effortless booking process
Travel businesses frequently use email and phone calls when communicating with staff members and making trip reservations. However, modern workers don’t want to waste time making repeated phone calls or email exchanges. Workers and trip supervisors should be able to log in and make independent work travel arrangements. Instead of sending emails to the corporate travel agency, this would assist travel managers in finding answers to all of their questions.
The technology should also permit group collaboration during the process. Employee cancelation and rebooking should be simple for the travel planners to handle.
3. Modern technologies for administrators and passengers
Corporate travel agencies frequently lack integrated travel and cost management systems. Additionally, safety and compliance issues stem mainly from a lack of integrated T&E software. Ensure the firm you select has a robust technological setup to obtain total data visibility into your business travel expenses. And the firm achieves close to 100% adherence to policies with built-in policy features and satisfies the needs of your responsibility for care program.
You may also check the agency’s travel and expense technology for cutting-edge services like a virtual travel advisor. A virtual tour operator may assist you in locating possible cost-saving measures within your company’s travel and expenditure procedure and can offer concrete recommendations on putting these realizations into practice. Using those insights, you can quickly reduce policy infractions and save a lot of money on travel.
Find out whether they have a smartphone website with an intuitive user interface that can be used to send frequent travel alerts and messages and to make travel reservations while on the move.
4. Extensive accommodation and airline selection
The travel industry could collaborate with a small number of suppliers who provide flights and accommodations. That is unquestionably an aspect to consider when choosing a business travel service.
Lack of a large hotel and flight inventory might limit you to a few potentially expensive alternatives, driving up the cost of your trip.
So, you ought to pick a business travel firm that obtains its travel catalog from a GDS. A GDS will be capable of gathering and organizing travel information from various sources to produce a comprehensive travel portfolio.
A large inventory would contain several modes of transportation like trains, buses, and airplanes, as well as different types of lodging like motels and studio flats. You can increase your cost reductions by doing this.
5. Geo-reach tour operator
Choose the business travel agents in Lexington you need based on their experience and regional profile.
For example, if most of your work travel is regional, you wouldn’t want a travel company with several locations worldwide. In contrast, if your workers often go abroad, think about employing a well-known tour operator so that you can get the necessary experience. Additionally, you may search for one that focuses on travel for businesses in your sector.
6. Statistics and reporting
A flawed system used by many business travel providers prevents them from providing comprehensive travel data insights.
Your travel planners won’t be able to make informed decisions to increase the effectiveness of the transportation management procedure and save expenses without thorough trip data insights. A thorough travel record for each work trip should be provided by the travel management firm you choose to your finance staff.
7. Protection of data
When traveling for business, handling and preserving sensitive data like employee identities and credit card info is necessary. The security of the company’s employees and customers may be at risk if this data is hacked.
It would help if you learned how the organization maintains data security and the safeguards it has put in place to ensure that information is not stolen. For instance, you may see whether any international security requirements must be adhered to. Therefore, you want to seek a business travel company that can protect the information of your personnel.
Once you have examined each of these factors, select a few travel industry firms, choose which one best suits your company’s requirements, and employ that one!
8. Innovating and scaling up quickly
The number of business tourists will rise along with your company’s expansion. Therefore, you want a system that can easily manage the growing volume of trip requests while storing all the necessary payroll information.
As a result, you want to seek business travel agents in Lexington that use cloud-based technologies. On-demand scalability provided by cloud-based systems makes it simpler to add more users and handle all of their data without incurring extra charges.
To be concluded
Using a business travel agency, we may handle our company travel process more effectively. However, companies who hire a typical travel agency frequently find themselves managing their expenditure and travel management with several providers, which results in inadequate data access, insights, and cost leaks.
To choose an advanced transportation management business, you must be able to comprehend and meet all of your firm’s travel and expenditure demands through a unified platform. Do you have further concerns about travel agents in Lexington? You can check out the website of The Travel Authority.
