Bharat SainiLast Updated on March 29, 2016 by Bharat Saini
Did you know that on an average small business travellers land up buying 40% of the air tickets per quarter, when compared to the big business travellers who land up spending 30% of their amount on the road? So if you have been checking several websites before booking flights or hotel rooms, then you are already doing much better when compared to the travellers. So have you been doing flexible date airfare searches before scheduling on the business trips. The strategy given below would here help you too save dollars while dealing with travel expense management.
Booking your tickets well in advance: Experienced business travel arrangers and frequent travellers generally look out for some cheapest fares, something that you could trust with a best air fare and go along with it. So the rule here is if you could book things in advance, the better the opportunity the more would you benefit from one of those tickets that you have booked with the lowest fare.
Being Flexible with the time that you would be travelling: Air ticket prices generally vary depending on the time and dates you would be travelling, especially when you are travelling for a short distance. It does become cheaper for the travellers to fly middle of the week rather than a Monday or Friday, or after a holiday. You could here also try and consider making a saving on the air travel costs considering to book a flight during the midday or early afternoon. You could also find cheap fares using flexible dates search feature of the online booking tool being offered by your business travel agent, provided you are working with a travel management company.
Signing up for a travel related credit card: By making use of the bonuses being offered through signups by the other travel organizations and the airline credit cards, you could here accumulate hundreds and thousands of miles each and every year without even flying spending more than you actually would be doing. By adding multiple users here you could here multiply the bonus, and by additionally signing up for the non-branded cards such as the chase ultimate rewards you could here earn points by those cards transferring them to your favourite airline.
Using online booking tools for your business: Try and consider your travel agents online self-booking tools in order to gain an access to global distribution systems. This is one of the most crucial aspect of cost savings on flight, as airlines offer different rates in the different distribution channel segmenting their market. By having an access to the global distribution system such as Amadeus, sabre and Travel port would help you gain access on the rates that were never published on the internet ever before. This would here in turn help you save a lot of money controlling your business travel spend.
Reward programs: Most hotels and accommodations system generally offers up their own reward systems like the Starwood preferred guest and the Marriott rewards. Just by having a booking done and showing up loyalty to them you could here earn enough points that would turn into a free accommodation, updates or perks like wine being served during the arrival or breakfast and the business lounge access. And of course there are many options made available that you could choose in order to save your time and money when travelling for a specific business purpose.
So what other ways you could save your time and money when compared to travel expense management. Do leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
Author Bio:
Melissa Patterson, as a software specialist and now as a blog writer has constantly set tough challenges and has achieved them. Many organizations are faced with the situation of balancing travel expenses and at the same time arrange a meeting with their clients. She has helped every organization achieve both the objectives through her innovative corporate travel expense management plan.
