5 Tips to Reduce Travel Expense in Small Business

Travel is one of the highest discretionary spend for many small business owners. It is also one of the spend items that you cannot skimp on either. You have to let employees travel to meet with customers, attend conferences and find prospects. There is only so much you can accomplish via phone or video conference. While there is no way to avoid travel there are ways in which you can reduce the travel expense without sacrificing your business. Below we share 5 tips to help you achieve that goal.

1. Book in Advance
Whether employees do their own booking or you plan trips for them as a business, booking in advance reduces hotel and flight costs. The closer you get to any trip, the higher the prices tend to get. Plus, when you book in advance, you have time to wait for the best days of the week to book your travel plans. You’ll also have more flight and hotel options to consider. If sending employees on the red-eye is the cheapest option, you’ll be able to book that flight before it fills up.

2. Create a Travel Policy
Instead of determining a specific travel budget or capping employee spending at the same amount each time, create a travel policy that employees must follow. This might mean specifying what kind of expenses require prior authorization or making a list of preferred hotel brands and airlines, especially if your business has a deal or an account with those brands. If you ask for preapproval for things such as flights and hotel bookings, your employees will have a harder time waiting until the last minute to book their travel plans.

3. Invest in Employee Safety
Encourage your employees to check on their health insurance plans before traveling for business. Getting sick or injured while far from home is inconvenient, and sometimes it’s downright scary. Additional protection while traveling can be prohibitively expensive, especially for businesses. Get an affordable air medical transport membership with MedjetAssist so that your employees know they’ll be able to get home easily if they become hospitalized with an injury or crisis while on the job.

4. Track Expenses with Apps
Encourage all your employees to track their expenses the same way so that you have an easy time reviewing the costs. Apps such as Expensify make it easy to create expense reports. You’ll have every expense report in the same format from all your traveling employees. They won’t even have to collect receipts, because the apps store receipt data from a simple picture.

5. Encourage Public Transportation, Shuttles, and Ridesharing
Instead of booking limos or drivers to get your employees around a new city, have them take public transportation or book rides with Uber or Lyft, which is generally cheaper than using taxis. Shuttles between airports and hotels also offer inexpensive ways to get from one to the other. Give your employees information about relevant public transportation before they leave so that they’re prepared to use it.

Pay close attention each time you implement a new policy or strategy, then compare it to what you were doing before. Tweak the formula until you lower your costs in a way that keeps your employees happy and focused on work.