There has always been a delicate balance between simplifying the booking process for business trips and the need to have some form of control, usually in the form of a pre-trip approval process that requires a line manager to sign off the booking.
Pre-trip approval can give travel buyers better visibility of future spend but there is always a trade-off with agility and the opportunity to secure the best fares, although technology that makes the workflow for the approval process much quicker has been advancing rapidly in recent years.
A recent survey from Egencia, Travel Policy Insights: Global Air Edition, analysed the policies of the travel management company's clients from around the world and shows that pre-trip approval is near universal in some regions while is virtually unheard of in others, as shown below.
The survey found that European companies generally exhibit a medium amount of control when it comes to asking travellers to seek approval for their trips. However, it identified some European countries that were outliers: in Sweden, for example, 92% of travellers were not required to seek approval for their trips.
The report also looked at access to premium classes around the world and again found a wide divergence between regions, as shown in the chart below.
