You want to keep travelling. After all, it’s a major part of your business. Without it, you would be out of business. At the same time, you need to figure out how to cut corners without cutting quality. You also don’t want to put your life in danger just to save a buck. Here’s how to squeeze more out of your travel dollar.
Outsource Your Travel Spend
If you’re not that great at managing your own travel spending, you might want to outsource it to another company – a travel company. Many companies allow their staff to control the travel bookings, and thus the expenditures. But, this is a major mistake. Companies that allow employees to do this often waste up to 30 percent of their travel budget on frivolous expenses that don’t make good business sense.
But, by outsourcing the bookings to a travel company, you have a built-in audit feature that keeps business travel expenses in check so that your company can focus on what it does best, instead of having to continually audit your books.
Use Fuel Cards
You could keep your fuel expense management in-house and try to negotiate rates with petrol companies yourself, but this isn’t what you’re good at. By outsourcing fuel management to a company like Fleetcare, you could save thousands.
These types of companies issue fuel cards – cards that earn you discounts both directly with suppliers and indirectly through active bookkeeping and management of fuel expenses. You save time, and money. Everyone wins.
Shop For Discount Flights, Hotels, and Car Rentals
One of the simplest ways to save money is to get online and shop for discounted flights, hotels, and car rentals. This is a great option if you’re a smaller company, you don’t travel often throughout the year, but you do travel consistently at specific times every year, or you just want to keep things in-house and you have the staff to do so.
Online booking is basically an alternative to using a professional travel company. Instead of having the travel company do the bookings for you, you enter in the dates that you want to travel, and then the discount site will help you arrange the flight. For hotels, the discount site often has made arrangements with a hotel or motel for discounted rates for you. For car rentals, it’s the same deal.
Book In Advance
The key to getting good rates on travel is often a matter of timing. If you book early, well in advance of your trip, you can score some amazing discounts. For example, booking 3 months in advance on any flight often allows you to save at least 10 percent, many times you’re able to save more.
It’s not unheard of to save 50 percent or more. However, if you can’t book something in advance, like a car rental, one of the best ways to still get a discount is to book your travel during off-peak times.
For example, if your flight arrives in the off-season for travel, and you get in earlier or later than peak rental times, there may not be anyone at the counter, and many vehicles that are just sitting there – this is an excellent opportunity for you to negotiate.