Comfort VS Cost: Choosing The Right Business Travel Accommodation
It’s the age-old question in travel – how do you balance comfortable business travel accommodation with cost-effectiveness?
In an age where employee health and wellbeing is more important than ever, it’s important for businesses to ensure they’re choosing the right business travel accommodation when sending staff on trips. However, how do you balance comfort against cost, and ensure staff are satisfied with their treatment during travel while also looking after the company books?
The Importance of Comfortable Business Travel Accommodation:
Utilising comfortable business travel accommodation is about more than just plush pillows, large beds and rooms with block-out curtains. Employee wellbeing, health and overall satisfaction are all important parts of business that can be impacted by business trips, and balancing cost with ensuring your staff get comfortable accommodation can go a long way towards managing these aspects.
Furthermore, business trips are typically utilised to close a deal, cement a relationship or expand business offerings, and it’s important that the person on the trip is operating at their best to achieve the best results – cost-cutting on accommodation can jeopardise this.
While no business wants to spend huge sums of money on accommodation, it is important to factor in a level of comfort for your staff when travelling to ensure they achieve the best results for the business – here are our top tips below.
Perfecting Your Business Travel Accommodation Agreement:
- Define what your staff want VS what the company can afford
A great way to understand your staff’s wants and needs when travelling interstate or overseas is to ask them. While not all requests will be realistic or manageable, asking your staff directly will help you gain an understanding of what is and isn’t important and where you should invest money (and where you can save). From here, this also gives you the opportunity to open the floor for negotiations to help you come to an agreement with staff on what level of accommodation can be expected.
- Write down the final agreement in your Company Travel Policy
Once you’ve decided on what level of accommodation and what comforts you’ll provide for your staff, it’s vital you note these down in detail in your Company Travel Policy. A Company Travel Policy is effectively your company’s travel bible, providing in-depth information on agreed accommodation, preferred suppliers, what costs are and are not approved and any other pieces of information that your staff may need to know about when booking or embarking on travel. Your Pulse Corporate Travel Arranger can support you in finalising the details of your agreement and noting this information down in detail so there is no confusion or disagreements in the future.
- Speak to your Travel Arranger regarding deals and discounts
When initially deciding on what level of business travel accommodation you’re willing to provide, you don’t have to go based on the prices you see online. Corporate Travel Agents often have access to deals, discounts and exclusive business travel rates, and may be able to provide these rates for you to help achieve a more cost-effective solution. For businesses only travelling irregularly, your Travel Agent may be able to inform you of deals and discounts to take advantage of – for businesses who regularly use the same hotels, your Travel Agent may be able to negotiate cheaper long-term offerings for you, ensuring you can provide the level of accommodation that your staff require while also looking after company costs. Pulse Travel has extensive knowledge in negotiating these costs, and can assist you if you’re navigating the world of supplier partnerships for the first time.
- Proactively manage any special exceptions
Due to age, injury or illness, some staff members may require special exceptions when travelling for business, and it’s important these are addressed and acknowledged at the beginning of your negotiations.For the purposes of employee satisfaction and retention, alongside Workplace Health and Safety, it’s important you take any injuries or illness into consideration and don’t just entirely sweep it under the rug – this could lead to losing high-performing staff or Workplace issues if your choice of accommodation causes further injury. However, your Pulse Corporate Travel Arranger will be able to find accommodation that suits these requirements, while still also ensuring that the accommodation is within the businesses budget.
- Regularly review your accommodation options
Accommodation prices and deals are constantly changing, so what may have been the best option twelve months ago may not be the best option now – When you’re reviewing your companies Travel Policy, also take the time to review your suppliers and the options available to see if there are any ways you can further manage your costs while retaining employee satisfaction.
Managing Your Corporate Travel
A big part of embarking on Corporate Travel is ensuring the travel is managed appropriately – from the initial Travel policy creation to last-minute changes if a flight, hotel or car is no longer available.
The team at Pulse Travel have over 30 years of experience managing Corporate Travel for their partners, and can assist in balancing your business costs against employee requirements to ensure satisfaction for both parties.
To learn more about how they can assist, get in touch today.