Business Trip

Read here where the money goes - in business travel:

Some employees spend hours browsing various online booking websites and, without realizing it, spend hundreds of Euros worth of working hours.

Sometimes, you're forced to pick between two imperfect options — trying to find the lesser of two evils, the least bad option.

These "rock and a hard place" decisions are never fun, but sometimes there's no way around them.

These classic (or better said "old fashioned") options have serious downsides:

• Self-booking forces employees to spend hours shopping for flights and hotels, comparing prices, and navigating phone trees when anything changes. It also fragments and delays reimbursement, forcing employees to front travel expenses for weeks or months.

• Travel management companies are expensive and, surprisingly, still quite time-intensive for corporate travelers, with plenty of back and forth for each booking and little control over the details, like seat choice and loyalty points.

If neither of these options sounds ideal to you, you're not alone. Most corporate travelers quickly get fed up with all the time and money they're wasting booking travel.

The actual cost of self-booking

On its surface, a self-booking policy might not seem that bad. Online booking tools have advanced considerably in recent years, and most consumers are familiar with how they work. Plus, self-booking gives employees more control over their bookings.

But scratch the surface, and problems start to emerge:

• How can you be sure to find the right accommodation regarding location, included services, and comfort?

• What happens when travelers need to make changes at the last minute?

• How can you be sure they're getting flights and hotels at the best prices and conditions?

• How much time are they spending booking flights and hotels?

• Do employees have to front the costs? How are the invoicing and payment made?

Our survey revealed that the answers to these questions aren't pretty. Employees who book their travel are probably spending way more time doing so than you'd expect. The average frequent business traveler spends 108 hours a year on admin work related to corporate travel — i.e., researching, booking, adjusting, canceling, and expensing travel. Needless to say, 108 hours is a lot. Too much, actually!

• 64% believe that the self-booking approach wastes time

• 55% feel it negatively impacts job productivity

• 70% say this booking time could be better spent in other areas

Clearly, self-booking is a travel management policy with some severe drawbacks. All of the time these employees spend booking, re-booking, and expensing travel is time they're not spending on their actual job.

The bottom line

There is no denying that travel is essential to business success, but it can be painful and time-consuming. Travelers bemoan the hours they spend booking, changing, and expensing corporate travel.

Consumer tools have set the expectation that booking travel should be intuitive and fast, but for most people, this is not the case for booking corporate travel.

While corporate travelers may have been ok with this situation a decade ago, they're no longer so patient. Today's frequent business travelers are looking for an easier, more streamlined way to manage their travel for work.

S-E-T-T has created a combination (as close to perfect as it gets):

• Our Bedbank (B2B Tool) for hotel bookings does the trick. Search after hotels with category, price range, location, facilities like restaurant or gym, distance to any address

• Have our experts on a chat (you enter the question at the right side of our website and get an immediate response)

We are giving you everything out of one hand!

• Rates & Conditions negotiated by our professional purchase department

• Tailor-made itineraries to suit your company's needs

• In-depth planning phase with the help of a Slack workspace

• Accommodation; such as 3* – 5* hotels, apartments or private villas

• Wellness and R&R

• Local transfers

• Restaurant Bookings - Food and drinks

• Events, co-working, and team parties (for employees or customers)

• Extension stays for private combinations (prolong your stay and combine business with pleasure

• Exploring and sightseeing tours for your personal stay

• Optional sustainability projects to help sequester your trip's carbon footprint