Four Ways a TMC Helps Beat the Business Travel Blues

Now more than ever before, travel plays a key role in the business world. It helps companies land key accounts, achieve growth, and enables employees to meet in-person, network, and collaborate. However, being on the road, even if everything goes according to plan, can be a huge stressor. For business travelers, that stress is compounded by the need to perform at a high level once they have reached their destination.

If your employees are on the road, it is imperative that they feel supported to avoid business-impacting stress and distractions. Fortunately, organizations can help their team avoid the business travel blues by leveraging a travel management company, or TMC. In this post, we’ll focus on the benefits of an all-in-one platform and how it reduces employee traveler stress in relation to booking, time and expense reporting, support, and compliance.

Eliminate Headaches with a Stellar App

For anyone booking business travel or managing expenses without the assistance of a TMC or via an aging legacy system, the pain of having to jump from one application to another to book travel or manage expense reports is all too real. Working in disparate systems wastes valuable time that could be spent on business initiatives.

Booking

From a booking perspective, TravelBank’s app is a one-stop-shop for flights, hotels, ground transportation, and itinerary management. Employees are able to save loyalty program information so that they can collect rewards points, emergency contact information, and even flight preferences (i.e. window or aisle). Thanks to our technology, employees (and finance teams) can also rest assured they are getting the best possible rates and trips are within the allocated budget.

Expense Management

As we all know, expense reporting can be one of the most unpleasant tasks associated with business travel. Tracking down receipts, remembering who was at a dinner or lunch, filling out the notes section–not the highlight of anyone’s day. However, it is a necessary evil.

In addition to providing a stellar booking experience, our app makes expense tracking and reporting a breeze. It helps provides options to categorize expenses, sync credit cards, and even has a description center to jot down notes on the go. Travelers can also snap photos of receipts, eliminating the need to keep track of a ton of paper.

Peace of Mind with 24/7 Support

Between presentation preparation, meetings, and networking, the last thing business travelers need is to have the added stress of dealing with a delayed or canceled flight or lodging issues. And as many of us have learned (likely the hard way), these travel setbacks rarely take place within regular business hours.

For TravelBank customers, having the peace of mind that 24/7 support is available (via phone, chat, or email) is one of the best ways to reduce stress and beat the business travel blues. We are experts at dealing with the unexpected and ensuring our travelers can focus on their work–not the details surrounding transportation and hotels.

Did you know that we also function as the agent of record for all booking and ticketing? With travel agents located both domestically and outside the U.S., we are also ready to help with non-emergency itinerary changes and provide super fast response times regardless of the communication channel. This means that you won’t be turned over to a third-party customer service organization. If your flight is canceled or delayed, you have check-in issues, or need to change plans, we’re here to help.

Built-in Policy Compliance

The last thing business travelers want to worry about is compliance with corporate policies, and we agree! Employees should be focused on the reason for their trip–whether it is to close a new account, build rapport with partners, or to focus on key initiatives with colleagues.

A well-crafted travel policy will define processes to support employees on the road, save money, and increase productivity. For organizations that utilize TravelBank, prompts and notifications regarding policy compliance are incorporated directly into the app. Employees are provided real-time responsiveness that takes the guess-work out of booking within company policies. By removing the ambiguity from the business travel process, employees can rest easy knowing their trip is within parameters and doesn’t risk rejection from approving managers.

Providing a First-Class Experience for Business Travelers

TravelBank was created to set new standards of excellence in the business and travel expense reporting space. Since day one, it has been our priority to provide a simple, effective, employee-first tool that alleviates the stress of business travel and provides peace-of-mind.

At the end of the day, it is our goal to eliminate the business travel blues and make booking, expense report, support, and compliance a simple, frictionless experience across an organization.