If your bookers and travellers complain about the time it takes them to arrange travel, or the difficulty they have in working out where they can and can’t book, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Sadly, it’s a common frustration for some organisations, where an incomprehensible travel policy or inadequate online booking tool and can lead to befuddled bookers and unnecessary expense.
Lolita Hall at TMCClick Travel breaks down the key reasons why implementing a simple booking process will be to the benefit of everyone in your organisation:
1. Time
Nobody wants to spend large portions of their day trawling through page after page of internet search results, a million tabs open with a different hotel or rail provider on every one, hunting down that certain room or fare for a whole list of different people.
Add in to the mix that certain individual who insists on death by email entitled ‘Special Requests’, as well as the fact you’re working all of this data to try and stick to budget. It all adds up to a travel manager’s worst nightmare.
Having a simple booking process in place can free up a booker’s time and allow travellers to book the majority, if not all, of their business travel themselves.
2. Cost
The other positive of saving time is… saving money. This can be achieved by evaluating your current travel policy and cutting out any superfluous details or rules that just serve to confuse or complicate, or, if you don’t have a travel policy, putting those wishy washy company guidelines into a clear, defined practice that eliminates grey areas and keeps things simple.
3. Ease
Once you have a clear, concise policy, you should find that your travellers and bookers will have fewer problems or issues with their business travel. But setting the policy up can be a tricky business.
There is no point in having a policy in place that is too restrictive or doesn’t reflect the modern market, but equally, you don’t want to give your bookers too much freedom to choose any fare or hotel they like (first class to a five star hotel for every journey anyone?) Finding a balance can be difficult, which is where a TMC can help.
4. Metrics
With a simpler booking process, there is less chance of users shopping around, booking through any number of different websites. Without aggregated content, bookers will often just go to hotel chains that they know or that reward them, whatever the cost. When you have content aggregation, bookers can use one tool to see all of the results, thereby reducing the need to shop around.
Having bookers arrange their travel through one tool allows travel managers to gain a better understanding of travellers’ travel trends and patterns. This allows companies, often with the assistance of management information from their TMC, to either modify policies or educate staff on alternative options/booking methods.
Summary
To summarise, employees don’t all have a degree in mathematics or hours of time to spend searching the web, and saving the company money may unfortunately not always be high on their priority list.
Therefore providing them with a simple booking process will make their life easier, more relaxed and leave them that little bit more content. This in turn makes the workplace a slightly more harmonious environment and saves your organisation money - perfect.
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