There are generally two kinds of business travellers – those who enjoy it and those who struggle with it! Love it or hate it, there are times when travelling for work can be overwhelming.

There’s sitting around waiting for flights, jet lag and being away from family and friends to deal with. Of course, there are ways to combat these issues, and having a good travel management company (TMC) on board will help.

Let’s take a look at the top reasons why people don’t look forward to corporate travel, and what can be done about it?

1. Personal challenges

Whether it’s four times a year or once a week, business travel involves leaving home and family, and often missing important personal events.

There’s also the risk of travel burnout. Business travellers have to contend with jet lag, then there’s the actual work. Meeting with people and constantly sharing meals means they need to be more ‘on’ than usual. If they aren’t giving a presentation or leading a meeting, they’re having to listen intently so they can report back. Generally, business travel involves a heavy schedule.

What’s the solution? A TMC can organise itineraries around personal commitments, and make sure there’s no wasted time between stops. Even better, they can intentionally arrange itineraries with enough downtime between meetings so travellers can recharge. TMC’s will also provide travellers with online access to their itineraries, which provide them with control and further ease to schedule breaks where possible.

2. The financial element

Many employees question whether travel is actually necessary. If they are travelling specifically to close a deal or meet with important clients, then there’s an obvious return on investment.

But today’s world is a lot smaller than it used to be. People can connect over email, social networks and Skype or similar apps. There are definitely times where meeting in this way is sufficient, yet companies still require employees to travel because they understand the benefit of face to face meetings.

When travelling, it’s often up to the employee to manage their expenses and the paperwork required. The admin is tedious and time-consuming, yet it’s necessary so the traveller can reconcile spend.

A TMC can help streamline the management of expenses. Request that all chargebacks for the big-ticket items such as flights, accommodation and car hire are handled by the TMC. This means all the traveller needs to consider are their personal incidental expenses.

3. Dealing with jet lag

Business travel can be physically demanding. Travellers need to cope with jet lag, and often struggle with getting enough exercise and eating well while on the road.

Companies can help employees combat this with some handy tips included with their travel policy. For example:

• To ease the transition to a new time zone, suggest travellers maximise their exposure to daylight at their destination and take short naps if they feel tired. A TMC can also help by tailoring routes and stops to minimise jet lag.
• Encourage staff to stretch in their seat and move around during the flight.
• Once at their destination, suggest heading out for a short walk as often as possible.
• Recommend that employees buy some healthy snacks once they get to their destination, and keep these on hand during the day to avoid purchasing junk food.

There’s no doubt that travelling for business can sometimes be hard. But by looking after your staff and using a TMC, you can improve the travel experience and boost the bottom line.

Are you looking to engage a TMC? Talk to us about the ways we can streamline your travel procurement and keep your travellers ready for more.

Nowadays, a TMC is as good as the tools it uses. I can say that one of the best decisions I’ve made as General Manager of JC Travel, is arm the team with a new weapon. Its name is Alienta, and it’s the newest online booking tool (OBT) for corporate travel.

Before Alienta, we were using a global corporate OBT. As soon as I received a demo for Alienta, I couldn’t wait to make the switch.

Our clients have significantly benefited from the change. And I believe this has given us the edge over companies that aren’t using Alienta.

Here’s why.

Transforming the customer experience

Typically, OBTs don’t allow clients to book international travel themselves. They have to go through a travel consultant paying an “offline” service fee. While this can be costly, it also takes the power out of their hands. It makes them dependent on their travel agency for the best deals, itineraries and turnaround time.

Since making the switch to Alienta, our clients are able to book their own international travel online. They can have any international itinerary at their fingertips, at any time, for up to 18 legs.

I understand eliminating this pain point decreases our potential income. However, it never fazed me. The way I see it, when our clients are happy, it’s much easier to build a long-term relationship and acquire new customers. There’s nothing wrong with putting the power firmly where it should be, in the hands of the customer.

Solving pain points

While global booking tools are useful, they do come with certain limitations. There were three main ways our previous tools weren’t letting us meet our clients’ expectations.. the way we wanted to anyway.

1. Limitations around customising services

Many OBTs have a one-size-fits-all approach. They simply don’t take into consideration different company travel policies.

The inability to tailor our services to individual clients meant they weren’t receiving the bespoke attention they deserved. Alienta allows us to customise our services to each of our clients. It’s like the difference between getting a tailored suit and one off the rack at a chain store.

2. Lengthy delays dealing with system errors

With our old system, all errors had to be reported to the technology provider and it could take the team weeks to get an answer. This led to a great deal of frustration for clients, and made it hard for us to provide the quality of customer service we wanted. With Alienta, system errors are automatically sent to our team of consultants. This ensures swift issue-handling.

3. Slow implementation

In other systems, it could take anything from three weeks to a month to set up new clients. With Alienta, we can set up clients in hours or less than a week at most.

What do our clients think of Alienta?

Because Alienta has so many features, clients are able to do things they couldn’t using our previous tools. So far, the feedback communicated directly to myself, as well as the team, has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are some of the features our customers have commented on:

• Easy personalisation to company travel policy and finance billing requirements
• Logical navigation around the system, making it faster to find what you want
• Simpler user log in process and general ease of use
• Hotel searches populating in a display map as well as list form is one of the favourites
• Easy transfer from the previous booking tool
• The comfort of knowing that they can leave a note or question for the agency at any time during the process

Our clients can draft their own itineraries, save them, manage and use their airline credits through Alienta (a significant challenge with most OBTs).

Most importantly, our clients don’t have to deal with issues themselves. If an error occurs, it comes to us automatically. They don’t have to do anything nor wait weeks for errors to get fixed.

Because we can now save time on the booking process, we’re able to focus on the business and provide the bespoke level of service we promise at JC Travel.

I can vouch that Alienta is designed from a customer’s perspective, unlike other tools which are designed from a travel agent’s perspective. This is the core of what makes it valuable. It’s why Alienta fits perfectly with our philosophy of putting the customer first.