When it comes to business travel you will have lots to organise if you have a big team, if you don’t want to get help with this it can get overwhelming. With the pandemic still going on and more variants of the virus spreading, it is wise to get help if you must travel abroad for business.
Get some help to organise travel
If you have a heavy workload you might need some help when it comes to business travel. There are companies that can manage everything for you including, booking flights, finding the best hotels, and arranging transfers for you and your colleagues. If you tend to travel frequently as a business, you can use business travel management to save time and make travel work for everyone.
Have all your days planned out
Without a plan when you arrive, things can get messy so it’s best to create a schedule and send it out to everyone coming on the trip before traveling. It’s a great idea to organise social events if you have any free time and meals in the evenings to catch up, and make sure everyone gets to know one another properly if they don’t already. If you have big groups you should make sure you book restaurants well in advance to avoid disappointment. It will save time if you know dietary requirements before traveling too so you can avoid restaurants that aren’t suitable for the whole team.
Set a budget for each and every trip
Whether you outsource business trip organisation or hold a few people in your team responsible for organising travel, you can set a budget to help them. Once you know how many people are coming on the trip you can set a budget for accommodation, flights, and social events. Without a budget and spreadsheet, things will get confusing and your finances will be all over the place. It’s best to be organised from the start and then business trips will be easier to repeat in the future.
Make sure everyone is aware of restrictions
Everyone in the team should be aware of travel restrictions and if they haven’t been vaccinated you can ask them to prove they have done a PCR or lateral flow test before flying, this will depend on the requirements for the country you are traveling to. Everything is changing regularly so you should make sure a week or two before that none of the rules have changed. Send out email reminders before traveling and make sure you get a response from everyone, some information can’t be missed.
Make a Whatsapp group
You should make a Whatsapp group for everyone going on the trip, this provides a safe place for communication and will alert everyone if there are any problems. Sometimes people don’t like getting too many notifications on Whatsapp so keep messages short and simple, yet informative.
Make sure everyone has booked travel insurance
It’s a good idea to offer travel insurance to your colleagues if they don’t have it already. There are also options to purchase group insurance that are usually cheaper even though they still cover cancellations, lost luggage and medical emergencies. Travel insurance can be complicated if employees have health problems that need to be taken into consideration, so just make sure you get all the details you need in advance.
It is essential to follow all these tips for managing your travel plans if you want everything to run smoothly. There is lots of responsibility if you’re traveling for business and you will want to keep everyone as happy as possible. If you are flying abroad regularly for meetings, it will be crucial to make the trip enjoyable for all your staff so they will want to come on more trips in the future.
