Even in our world of remote work, travelling for business is still a vital need, whether it’s for something specific like a site inspection that can’t be done remotely, for building relationships, or to grow your business. In fact, business travel typically accounts for about 5% to 10% of a company’s overall budget. It stands to reason that you need to ensure every penny spent on business travel is positively contributing to the bottom line. So, how can you maximise returns on your business’s travel investment?

Calculating the ROI for Business Travel

Calculating a Return on Investment (ROI) is a standard maths equation: Divide the net gain from the investment by the original cost of the investment. For example, if you closed a deal on your business trip, you could take the revenue from that deal and divide it by the travel costs. But calculating the gain is not always that simple. Sometimes, there are business trips that you can’t pin a value on, like the trust you grow from face-to-face meetings.

Ultimately, how you calculate the ROI will be as unique as your business. Regardless of how you choose to quantify the value of business travel, it stands to reason that to increase the ROI when travelling for business, you need to either increase the business outcome, decrease travel costs, or both. 

How to maximise your business travel ROI

Harvey World Travel helps clients achieve significant annual savings through tried and tested strategies that deliver cost-effective solutions—without compromising on service quality or the traveller experience.

Here are the top 5 strategies that organisations can embrace to improve the ROI on business trips:

1. Set some ground rules

The easiest way to reduce costs (and boost your ROI) is to limit unnecessary travel. A travel policy is the best way to provide guidelines for business travel bookings within budget.

For example:

• Establish specific financial boundaries for the categories of flights, accommodations, transportation and dining costs.
• To reduce unnecessary spending, you must have all employees use your designated travel management company (TMC) to book travel, instead of performing independent searches.

Your local Harvey World Travel partner can assist you in developing a comprehensive travel policy when you initiate a partnership.

2. Trip approval

Putting an approval process in place to authorise travel requests will help you ensure that spending aligns with your budget and company policies, which will positively impact your return on investment.

For example, your company could save up to 20% on travel costs by booking early. So, adding a stipulation that bookings should be made at least 7 days before travel could be one of the approval requirements for business trips. It’s also usually a good idea to make a manager responsible for approval as they have line of sight of company objectives and budgets.

When setting these up, remember that cumbersome workflow processes result in delays, which can result in rate changes that can impact potential savings.

3. Get the best deals

Most supplier deals work on the same principle – the more you support them, the more discounts they offer. However, as a small business, the catch is that your spend usually doesn’t qualify for many deals.

This is when it’s a good idea to partner with a Travel Management Company like Harvey World Travel. We use our buying power to negotiate reduced rates with travel suppliers that regular customers cannot obtain. In addition, our booking strategies help find the best rates, which leads to travel savings of 15-25% above public booking platforms.

4. Leverage travel technology            

Time is money, and employees can waste valuable time scrolling the internet to book travel, which can result in real monetary losses. Just think about the process involved to change a flight or try to recoup a refund on a cancelled trip.

Using a travel management company saves time . They are experts who can help ease the stress associated with booking travel. They have access to industry-leading travel booking inventory to provide the best rates, provide advice and travel tips, and manage the trip end-to-end, including cancellations. The biggest advantage is that if travellers are ever in a sticky situation, they have access to 24/7 support to get them back on the road as quickly as possible, preventing them from losing work hours due to rebooking.

Suppose you are big enough to warrant implementing an Online Booking Tool. In that case, these tools generally have pre-populated traveller preferences and in-built travel policy rules, making it easy for travel bookers to book travel accurately and quickly. The time savings from this process would amount to substantial hours per year for organisations that arrange hundreds of bookings annually.

5. Data-Driven Decision Making

Organisations need to quantify their expenditure to enhance business performance. Our reporting system provides customisable analytics to help clients measure their expenditure patterns, together with policy adherence and supplier usage and discover potential saving opportunities.

Harvey World Travel helps businesses convert their travel spending into strategic business advantages while requiring all investments to prove direct returns in current market conditions. Through cost optimisation, efficiency improvement, data intelligence and traveller protection services, we deliver quantifiable improvements to your travel program ROI. Talk to your local Harvey World Travel franchise to find out more about the benefits of strategic travel management.