It’s easy for the planning of your business trips to spiral out of control when you include in things like finding the greatest deals, ensuring that all policies are followed, keeping track of all expenses, managing travel hazards, and reaching your sustainability goals.
So, what would be the most effective solution? What we’re talking about here are travel management firms.
Hiring a corporate travel management company, also known as a TMC, will spare you the hassle of managing several travel plans and rules and will help you simplify your travel program. We have compiled a list of the top four TMCs now operating in Colorado, as well as a comprehensive guide that includes the following topics:
• The advantages of employing the services of a travel management firm
• The most important characteristics to search for when selecting a travel management business
• The top four businesses in the state that specialize in business travel management
The use of a travel management business comes with the following four advantages:
Your travel program can be optimized in a number of different ways by a travel management company (TMC), regardless of whether you are working at a large-scale firm or constructing an up-and-coming startup. Let’s have a peek.
• Travel management companies streamline the booking process from beginning to end. By utilizing online booking tools, you can easily and quickly identify the appropriate flights, hotels, train tickets, and other travel accommodations for your employees who are traveling.
• Travel management companies make post-trip reporting easier by providing access to tools that make it easier to compile and distribute detailed travel itineraries. These itineraries may then be used to inform future business trips.
• Travel management companies save you money: whether it’s reduced airfares or enhanced expenditure management, TMCs can help you take complete control of your travel budget. TMCs save you money in a number of ways.
• Travel management companies should assure policy compliance. You should be able to upload your company’s travel policy to ensure that your workers who travel for work never go over their allotted budget for travel expenses.
To put it another way, a corporate travel company can simplify the booking process, guarantee that thorough travel reports are generated, and reduce the amount of money you spend on travel.
When selecting a travel management business, it is important to look for the following features:
In the past, managing travel itineraries required face-to-face interaction with a travel agent working in a traditional brick-and-mortar agency. It needs frequent back-and-forth over the details, complicated arrangements and documentation, and a lack of transparency that causes travel managers to question whether or not they have gotten the best value.
The process of managing travel has advanced to the point where it is now possible for travel managers to easily and quickly locate the best offers without having to leave their desks. The most challenging task at hand right now is determining which TMC is ideal for your company.
Let’s break down the six most important characteristics that a TMC should have:
The magnitude of the inventory
You should look for a travel management business that has a comprehensive selection of travel options, including flights, trains, rental cars, and lodgings. You need a sufficient number of options to compare and select from for the dates and locations that you have chosen, and these should include possibilities that are friendly to your budget.
Options for scheduling and canceling that are both flexible
It’s possible that you’ll need to make last-minute adjustments to the plans for your business trips. The travel agency that you use should be flexible enough to accommodate these changes and allow you to modify or cancel bookings if necessary.
Fantastic customer assistance
It’s possible that staff members will require assistance either before they leave or while they’re away. During the entirety of the journey, your travel management company (TMC) should make itself conveniently accessible and provide help 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is vital for ensuring that your staff travel in a safe manner and are never left stranded without somebody to contact when they are away from the office.
Utilize options for expense control to get a handle on your spending.
A crucial component of effective management of business travel expenses is the ability to exercise full command over expenditures. You require a solution that is able to adhere to the guidelines outlined in your travel policy, restrict the amount of money that individual travelers can spend, and search for the most competitive prices.
Dashboards for reporting and analysis of data
You can gain better visibility into your spending and taxes with the help of comprehensive reports covering each trip. You can use this information to more thoroughly investigate your travel habits and arrive at more informed choices in the future.
Integrations of compliance and approval processes
In accordance with your company’s travel policy, the travel management company that you choose should also assist you in the development of personalized workflows for the review and approval or rejection of reservations. In order to increase compliance rates and make sure you stay within your travel budget, this feature is non-negotiable and cannot be changed.
The top four businesses in the state that manage business travel in Colorado
Now that you have a better idea of what you’re looking for, let’s take a look at some of the best options available to Colorado-based businesses in terms of business travel management. We have compiled a list of the four most reputable corporate travel management companies in order to assist you in narrowing down your options and selecting the best one for your company.
1. TravelPerk
The all-in-one corporate travel management system that TravelPerk provides is what’s known as “taking corporate travel management to the next level.” TravelPerk streamlines the booking process by providing a centralized invoicing platform, ample integrations with third-party tools, and flexible travel options, in addition to a great number of other features. Its primary purpose is to provide travel managers and employees with a better overview of their business trips.
For all of your business travel requirements, the following are some of TravelPerk’s most useful features:
• The most comprehensive travel inventory in the industry, including flights, accommodations, rail travel, auto rentals, and even Airbnbs, so that you can be sure to get the solutions that are most suitable for your company.
• Flexible bookings with FlexiPerk: With FlexiPerk, you can cancel your ticket up to two hours before it is scheduled to depart and receive a guaranteed return of 80% of the cost of your trip.
• Reach your sustainability goals with GreenPerk: If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, the GreenPerk carbon offsetting program can help you do so.
• Trip policy compliance and approval workflows: If you want to keep your travel spending within your budget, you should add travel policy compliance to your platform and set up approval workflows in less than two minutes. This will help you keep track of your spending.
• Effective risk management with TravelCare: Stay on top of potential dangers and put the safety of your employees first with the assistance of TravelCare.
• Support for customers around the clock: With TravelPerk’s best-in-class travel assistance staff, which has a response time of 15 seconds on average, you can make sure that your employees are secure and connected when they are traveling for business.
Additionally, in addition to managing business travel, TravelPerk can also assist you with the organization of local, regional, national, and even international events. It doesn’t matter if you need to manage participants, book venues, or organize meetings; TravelPerk gives you the ability to accomplish all of these things and more.
Your company’s travel program will be optimized using TravelPerk, and the hassle of coordinating with different travel agents will be eliminated entirely. It is a one-stop shop for organizing your business travel itineraries, so you won’t have to worry about whether or not policies are being followed, whether or not travelers are safe, or whether or not they are reporting their travel.
2. Cain’s Travel (Cain’s)
Boulder, Colorado is the home of Cain Travel, a specialized travel firm known as Cain Travel. Cain Travel, which is one of the largest independently owned travel management companies in North America, can primarily assist you with streamlining your cost management, making and monitoring travel bookings, and enforcing your company’s travel policy.
Cain Travel is most well-known for the following:
• Online booking tool that can be personalized Make use of a trip booking service, such as SAP Concur or Etta, that can be personalized to your travel policy and budget.
• Remain within your financial constraints by controlling costs, increasing savings, and preventing unnecessary expenses with negotiated rates for all goods and cost-cutting solutions.
• Ensure that your policy is effectively implemented by establishing approvals for various stages of the booking process and preventing all reservations that are not in accordance with the policy.
• Personalized, high-touch service: Contact the 24/7 support for any assistance and receive individualized direction from travel professionals who have more than 17 years of expertise in the business.
• Fulfill your duty of care by providing employees with full visibility into their travel plans and minimizing the risks associated with travel by making assistance easy to get.
Despite all of these benefits, Cain Travel suffers from a few significant drawbacks, the most notable of which is their booking engine. The booking engine is cumbersome and does not have the most up-to-date inventory; it is powered by Concur. In addition, unlike with TravelPerk, you are unable to keep track of your spending in real time or offset the carbon emissions caused by your trip.
3. Travel Without Stopping
Direct Travel is a business travel management company that operates a number of offices in the United States and Canada. The organization, which has its headquarters in Denver, provides a wide variety of travel services to satisfy your requirements. These services range from advice and planning to spending management and analytics.
The following is a list of the benefits that Direct Travel provides to organizations:
• Management of the program from beginning to end: Collaborate with experienced account managers to design, review, and improve your travel program on a consistent basis.
• Data-driven savings: Get vital data in real-time to make bookings at the best airfares and prices; watch your expenses through thorough reporting; keep tabs on your credit card statements.
• Enhanced experience for travelers: With the Direct2U mobile app or the web travel site, you can stay on top of your schedule at all times and take advantage of round-the-clock customer service.
• Services for international travel: Make travel arrangements anywhere in the globe with our global travel management systems, supplier data, spend analysis, and more.
Although Direct Travel is a reputable corporate travel service in Colorado, all of their reservations are made through the use of booking tools provided by a third party. Because of this, you will not have full control over the planning process, which is something that is guaranteed when you use TravelPerk’s centralized booking platform.
In addition, they do not offer any of the advanced features that are available through TravelPerk, such as flexible bookings and cancellations, carbon offsetting, and event management.
4. CTM
Corporate Travel Management (CTM) is an international travel management company that provides comprehensive travel management solutions to businesses of varying sizes all over the world. Because of its booking technology, the company’s employees and travel managers are able to make travel arrangements online.
Let’s take a look at a few of the reasons why CTM is recognized as a market leader in the field of business travel management:
• App that takes the hassle out of traveling: With the CTM travel app on your smartphone, you can book, modify, and manage your travel plans on the go.
• Strategic control of the budget: Take advantage of CTM’s worldwide buying power to obtain cheap fares and to benchmark the spending of your employees in order to realize the greatest possible savings.
• Powerful business intelligence, including the ability to access a personalized dashboard and collaborate with a devoted account manager to monitor and improve your organization’s travel policy.
• Improve compliance by planning, approving, and keeping track of your bookings through the use of the CTM Portal, which provides fully-integrated solutions for travel management.
• Solutions tailored to particular sectors: You can select from a variety of available alternatives for particular industries, such as sports, universities, governments, small businesses, and more.
Despite the fact that it is a worldwide provider of corporate travel management services, CTM is unable to compete with TravelPerk’s user-friendly functionality or market-leading inventory. It does not provide flexible bookings, nor does it ensure that all requirements will be met. CTM also requires a monthly subscription fee, but with TravelPerk, you only pay for the service when you make use of it.
Pick a dependable travel management business in the state of Colorado.
It can be challenging to locate a travel management partner for your company that is reliable and offers all-inclusive services. We are happy to inform you that we have made this process simpler for you by compiling a list of the top four TMCs for businesses located in Colorado.
There is a clear winner among these four: TravelPerk, the end-to-end corporate travel management platform with a sleek interface, best-in-class inventory, and corporate travel-specific features that hundreds of happy customers agree with on Capterra and G2. TravelPerk is the clear winner among these four.