Corporate travel has undergone huge changes in the last decade and effective management of the travel function is no longer as simple as booking a flight and a hotel room. For this reason increasingly many organizations are resorting to business travel consultants because a business travel consultant is often the best solution when it comes to simplifying corporate mobility that can often be overwhelming. Having a professional business travel consultant to analyze their needs and requirements would bring in orderliness, cost-cutting and a tension-free travel program to organizations?
What Does a Business Travel Consultant Actually Do?
Basically, a business travel consultant is someone (or a professional agency) who takes care of all the corporate travel for a company including flights, hotel accommodation, ground transportation, visas and adherence to company travel policies. A business travel consultant is not like any normal travel agent.
A professional business travel consultant isn't only booking trips. They are establishing relationships with airline partners and hotel chains in order to obtain corporate rates. They track the travel costs across different departments and are the single point of contact whenever you change plans down from the minute. This type of support proves invaluable when sending a handful of employees overseas on a regular basis, especially if your business has close links with a well-equipped hub like Schiphol Travel where a daily routine involves zakenreizen to numerous Dutch and international companies.
The Cost-Saving Case for Hiring a Business Travel Consultant
Cost management is one of the primary reasons business travel consulting is so popular. Since business travel is usually the most significant controllable expense on a company's profit and loss report, it is better to be in control than not. The business travel consultant would review a company's expenditures, establish negotiated rates with vendors, and help enforce travel policies that discourage things such as upselling or booking just before due date, often at extreme costs.
In addition to negotiated discounts, a business travel consultant also pays for himself or herself indirectly by saving wasted time. Employees who would normally spend hours on the phone shopping for flights and hotels can concentrate on their jobs; the business travel consultant takes care of the details behind the scenes. At the end of a year, the net time savings is just the sort of benefit that normally doesn't show up on your invoice-and yet it's real.
Duty of Care and Traveler Safety
One of the other key functions of a business travel consultant is to make sure their people are safe and well. Work travel represents a duty of care by the employer to their employees, which has come to be taken very seriously following recent global supply chain and pandemic disruptions, and the dramatic rise in cross-border conflict. A business travel consultant keeps track of the whereabouts of all their people at any given time, observes current travel warnings, and is able to rebook or transfer people at short notice.
Keeping track of this manually is hard to do, particularly for those that have dozens or hundreds of employees traveling regularly. Business travel consultants will usually take advantage of certain software tools that give up to the minute updates on where travelers are, how their flights are going and if they're at risk in any way, helping HR and management teams react fast if needed.
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Streamlining Policy and Compliance
Business travel policies exist for a reason, but they can only work if they’re followed and administered uniformly. A business travel consultant can deploy booking engines and authorisation processes that take the hard work out of policy compliance for the traveler. Instead of trusting employees, they can introduce automated out-of-policy booking alerts that need advanced manager approval before the reserve.
This can be quite useful for expense reporting and tax purposes as expenses incurred for business travel are heavily intertwined with VAT regulations, applicable allowances and the reimbursement policies that are country-specific. An experienced business travel consultant is aware of such rules, so that a company doesn't breach any local regulations when travelling in and out of the dominant transfer hubs in a region.
Personalized Service vs. Generic Booking Platforms
Most companies start with self-service booking tool thinking this is the most affordable way. While self-service booking tools are designed for very small teams with simple and predictable trips, they are not geared to scale up to more complex travel requirements. A business travel consultant does just that, a human relationship understanding the company's specific needs, priorities, politics etc.
Such as: if the same flight is canceled at midnight on a Sunday, an automated booking gateway can dump the issue back onto the traveler who must rebook and make his or her own arrangements. For a business travel consultant there is generally someone ready to be reached 24/7 and there is always a voice ready to make your next reservation, book your cheap train ticket, or arrange a hotel room on a secondary line, should you call in the middle of the night. Not being able to reach anyone else on these matters is one of the most compelling reasons to settle for the expertise of a business travel consultant-rather than choosing the do-it-yourself route.
Sustainability and Business Travel
In today's context, a business travel consultant not only takes care of clients' needs but also provides them with an estimation of the environmental impact of their travel, ranging from the simple promotion of traveling by train instead of short-haul flights (if possible), to the organization of trip consolidations as a way to cut down on the overall trip count.
A green adept business travel consultant can also positively influence the selection of business vendors – airlines, hotels and car rental agencies – to purchase from the ones who are intent on embedding sustainability into their business operations and offerings, helped, of course, by the spend.
Choosing the Right Business Travel Consultant
However, not all suppliers are equal and choosing the right business travel consultant is something that should be researched thoroughly. The company should find a supplier that specializes in your business sector, has the correct technology in place, is fairly priced, offers honest pricing and is experienced in providing great customer support to travelers. How the corporate travel consultant handles emergencies or crisis situations is something that should also be investigated as this is where the real value can be detected.
Case studies and literature from similar businesses could also be a clue that a business travel consultant is right for a company. Many companies offer a trial period or a smaller first contract so that the business can see if it works.
Conclusion
As business travel in general has grown more sophisticated, more expensive and more important to the welfare of the workforce than any other time in history, the significance of a business travel consultant, far from diminishing, has in fact increased exponentially. Whether it is improving savings, managing the requirements of a business travel policy, providing a duty of care or ensuring green credentials, a top quality business travel consultancy now represents an influence on virtually every area of a company's travel policy. To aim towards being a safer, greener and more cost effective traveler, a business travel consultant is possibly one of the shrewdest investments around.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is a Business Travel Consultant?
A business travel consultant manages a company's entire business travel: booking transportation, booking hotels, expense management & optimization, compliance & quality of service in accordance to company travel policy, duty of care, reporting. Business travel consultants at Schiphol Travel also act as dedicated Account Manager(s) to each client organization.
2. How much will a business travel consultant be able to save my company?
A good business travel consultant (for instance when booking with Schiphol Travel) can reduce your business travel spend by 10-30% through intelligent ticketing, negociated fares and global buying power.
3. Schiphol Travel est réservé uniquement pour les multinationals?
Do you believe that Schiphol Travel is reserved only for multinationals and upper class within the Netherlands? Schiphol Travel provides its 5-star service to all individuals looking for a professional business travel consultant.
4. What kind of experience do the Schiphol Travel business travel consultants have?
All of the Schiphol Travel business travel consultants have a FAT 2 qualification and have traveled exclusively for at least 5 years.