The perks that a travel management system can offer your business sound good, But slow down before you rush to invest. It’s crucial to make sure that the travel management system that you choose has the features that your business needs.
What is a travel management system?
Travel Management System is an end to end complete software solution which helps the end-users or travel agents to manage service providers, bookings, pricing, tracking, analyzing the inventory, etc. This travel management solution may include all the travel branches like Hotel, Car, Bus, Rail, Air, individual, or group tourist package.
features of travel management systems
When you are comparing travel management systems, it’s important to understand which features are the most impactful. Here are the features of travel management systems which can help you manage travel safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively
1. Travel Management System with Customizable travel policies
The most important feature of a travel management system is the travel policy. When office managers or travel managers book on behalf of travelers, you would need in-app travel policies to keep administrators on the same page. The management system should allow you to preset your travel policy so that it’s life and working whenever anyone books a trip. It is just a boring document, you have it right there in your booking app, where it matters most.
2. Travel Management System With Customizable approval workflows
It should include approval workflows inside of the platform so that if anything falls outside of policy, the person booking a trip can request approval and save their trip details. It should allow to set up these approval workflows such as picking different approvers for different teams and customizing the level of strictness. The approval is required for all trips or just trips that fall out of policy or just trips booked by certain travelers.
3. Travel Management System With Extensive inventory
If it is a system that lacks low priced accommodation and flight carriers, then one will be missing out on big cost-savings opportunities. The millennials actually tend to book budget options, It would be wise to make these available to them.
4. Travel Management System With Support at no additional cost
The management system should include support at no additional cost. This way, one would know what they are paying for and there are no surprises at the end of the month. This will help travelers to get the support they need when they need it without worrying about upsetting anyone in finance for a bunch of support calls.
5. Travel Management System With No redirects
When you are booking a vacation and you get redirected, it’s annoying. The redirects are not only obnoxious, they make tracking your business travel all but impossible. At the end of the month, you’ll be scouring the web trying to collect all your invoices. Avoid this at all costs.
6. Travel Management System With Travel spend reporting
The most important feature is the ability to report on business travel. Here are some things you’ll want to be able to track:
- Travel spend by time period
- Travel spend by department or team
- Amount of travel spend booked out of policy
- Travel spend by project or client or event
- Amount of travel spent for hiring
7. Travel Management System With Consolidated invoicing
The easiest way to track your business travel is to book it in one place. However, some systems don’t act as a single vendor, one would need a lot of different invoices. To save time and hassle on business travel, choose a system that consolidates all of your monthly travel into a single vendor invoice.
8. Travel Management System With Status of all trips in one place
The whole point is being able to consolidate travel, which allows one to log in to the travel management platform to check the following:
- Who has successfully booked their trip within policy
- Who is requesting an out-of-policy booking and why
- Who has an in-progress trip (they’ve saved an itinerary but not completed the booking yet)
- Who hasn’t booked a trip
When you are in charge of booking travel, you need to know what is going on with an instant overview to discover which travellers need extra help.