Challenges of Flight Booking for Businesses

 

Even though corporate employees prefer business travel since it facilitates face-to-face conversations that are known to bear more fruits than online meetings, it is often met with many challenges. One of the primary challenges among these is flight booking, especially SME flight booking, as they do not have the resources available to larger corporates. In this article, we will extensively discuss the critical challenges faced in flight bookings by corporates:

 

The problems associated with booking corporate flights can be taxing for everyone involved. Travel managers, employees, and the company’s finances take a toll due to unmanaged travel bookings, especially flight bookings. These challenges might vary, but regardless of the cause, it still has the potential to wreak havoc on the travel budget allocated by the company. This is why timely addressing these issues becomes imperative so that face-to-face business meetings can run smoothly and without turbulence. In this article, we take a closer look at the most pertinent causes of strenuous flight bookings:

 

Every business travel booking has to adhere to the company’s policies. Employees have to ensure that all booked flight tickets are within the budget specified by the company. This includes both the booking and ticketing process. As such, this often involves a lot of navigation between multiple travel platforms to find tickets that are within policy. Achieving this alignment between company policy and flight booking is often highly complicated. This can also make it prone to booking mistakes that can cost heavily during expense management to both the employee and the company.

 

Booking corporate air travel individually from third-party platforms can be challenging, especially during the expense management stage. More often than not, employees making bookings from external sources involves:

• Multiple invoices and receipts.

• Keeping them safe until their return to the office.

• Submitting those expenses in bulk post-return.

       

It could even involve manually entering the expenses in an excel sheet, where even a slight oversight can prove to be extremely risky. Hence, the time involved in filing expense claims and the risk of manual error can result in misreporting of expenses, hampering easy reconciliation. 

 

Flight bookings are expensive. This is a fact that every business traveller is well aware of. This expense contributes significantly to the overall business travel budget of any company. Hence, every travel manager and all business travellers try to find ways to find cost-effective alternatives to keep the expenditure within the allocated budget. Finding these cheaper and discounted business flight tickets is a challenge altogether and makes corporate travel troublesome for every traveller going on a business trip.

 

A significant challenge faced by business travellers comprises of the difficulty in making last-minute changes. Business travel is defined as being unpredictable because meetings are often cancelled or rescheduled. The flight ticket booking business makes it extremely difficult because last-minute flight cancellations or changes can be exceedingly costly. It can upset the entire financial planning of a company and cause it to overshoot the travel budget.

 

Business travellers and their travel admins are often forced to compromise on comfort when they book corporate flights. Business meetings require employees to book tickets urgently, causing them to make a choice between booking and comfort. In this battle, often reaching the business location on time takes precedence and comfort is sacrificed, forcing employees to bear uncomfortably through odd hours on the flight. 

  

These challenges can directly or indirectly impact the performance of employees travelling to achieve critical business goals. However, these challenges of large corporate or SME flight booking can be taken care of by partnering with the right travel management company like myBiz. It takes care of every aspect of business travel bookings by being:

• •  A fully automated one-stop solution for all travel needs.
• •  An integrated expense management tool.
• •  A cost-saving solution that offers the best-in-class corporate rates and discounts.
• •  A single platform with the most extensive inventory of flights and hotels.
• •  The ideal TMC that offers last-minute cancellations and changes at reduced rates.
• •  A unique platform that prioritizes employee comfort with free meal and seat selection.
• •  A 24/7 dedicated support for travellers encountering business travel-related issues.

 

So, simplify your flight booking issues by partnering with the perfect TMC and let your business travel take off smoothly. Join now!

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Q1. Can employees claim work-related flight booking expenses?

Ans. Yes, employees can claim flight corporate expenses by submitting the invoices and seeking reimbursement post approval. 

 

Q2. Can a TMC integrate the company’s policy for flight bookings?

Ans. Yes, the right travel management company like myBiz helps businesses integrate their travel policies so that the employee’s flight bookings comply with it.

 

Q3. How is automated expense management better than manually submitting flight booking invoices?

Ans. Automated expense management through an ideal TMC like myBiz eliminates the possibility of manual error and misreporting while making reimbursements quick and efficient.

 

Q4. How to ensure flexibility in corporate flights bookings?

Ans. Partnering with the right TMC, like myBiz, can ensure absolute flexibility in flight bookings with reduced cancellation and date change charges.