Planning is everything whether it is for a trip or the booking process. It is important to know the travelling ones as well as the payers. The result should be the best price-performance ratio.
Booking process
Taking time to plan your time is not only valid in time management. The same applies to a booking process. How many bookings can I make immediately and how many do I have to request manually (by email)? How much time do I spend to follow up on my enquiries? Can I develop standards to get quick and comparable offers and how can I organise an effective approval process? These are questions of which correct answers are the key to relieving administrative work considerably down from 40 to 10%.
Simple bookings
The aim of planning should be putting together all simple bookings (a round-trip flight, possibly a hotel for the night and rental car for the time) in less than five minutes and get them approved within 24 hours and all with just a few mouse clicks.
In order to do that, plan ahead:
- Create travel profiles and police.
- Create standards for comparable offers of travel classes and conditions.
- Use a central provider for all the elements of the booking, payment and evaluation processes.
Extensive bookings
Large bookings (meetings, incentives, conferences, congresses, longer stays and group trips) can still take a long time. Here, too, planning the booking process in advance can save enormous administrative time.
Avoid all manual bookings with digital help and create the possibility to force the providers to respond to your request conditions with a quotation and price. Too often the request conditions are not met if one requests manually. There are digital solutions that make it possible to compare quickly and clearly and to come to a decision with approval within 24 hours. This also helps with short-term needs, changes and cancellations and ultimately saves a lot of money.
Trip
Even when going on a trip, planning in advance is required. It is not just about getting a low price, it is also about guaranteeing travelers the best possible comfort. It will not help anyone to send their employees on a trip if they never get sleep in their hotel or if they are very tired due a stressful journey. It is important to know the travelers in detail with all their personality traits, likes and dislikes. Confidential information that belongs into the travel profile is necessary to plan the right trip for everyone and too achieve the above goals. This information is, of course, handled with utmost diligence.
This difficult balancing act can be achieved if you want to do your job right.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!