Business travel is a broad term. but if you're involved in managing it, procuring it, or simply doing a lot of it, the details matter enormously. In this guide, we cover what business travel actually means, what it involves, who's responsible for it, and what good business travel management looks like in practice.
So, what is business travel?
At its simplest, business travel refers to any travel undertaken for work purposes - trips made to attend meetings, visit customers, attend conferences, deliver training, or represent your organisation at events. Unlike leisure travel, business travel is driven by professional need rather than personal choice, and in most cases, it's funded by the organisation.
Business travel can range from a single overnight stay in a domestic city to complex, multi-leg international itineraries involving flights, hotels, rail travel, car hire and ground transfers. It can be planned months in advance or booked with less than 24 hours' notice. It can involve a lone traveller or an entire group attending the same event.
What ties all of it together is that it sits within, or at least should sit within, a structured framework that governs how travel is booked, what it costs and how employees are kept safe whilst away from home.
What does business travel include?
Business travel isn't just about booking rail, flights and hotels. A well-managed travel programme typically encompasses a wide range of products and services, including:
- Rail travel and international rail like Eurostar
- Flights (domestic and international)
- Hotel accommodation - from budget properties to full-service business hotels
- Car hire and ground transport
- Airport transfers
- Travel insurance and assistance services
- Visa and passport support for international travel
- Indirectly, business travel also includes meetings management services
- Group travel and event travel coordination
Who's involved in business travel?
Business travel touches more parts of an organisation than most people realise. It's rarely the concern of just one team, it sits at the intersection of procurement, finance, HR, operations, approvers, and the travellers themselves.
Travel managers
In larger organisations, a dedicated travel manager or travel coordinator is responsible for overseeing the travel programme - setting policy, managing supplier relationships, monitoring spend, and ensuring traveller wellbeing. They're usually the primary contact for a TMC like Clarity.
Procurement teams
Procurement professionals are often responsible for sourcing and negotiating the contracts that underpin a travel programme.
Finance directors and finance teams
Travel is typically one of the top three controllable costs in any organisation. Finance teams want visibility, accurate reporting and control over spend. They'll be interested in things like budget adherence, out-of-policy bookings and the overall return on investment from business travel.
HR and people teams
Duty of care, the organisation's legal and moral responsibility to keep travelling employees safe falls largely within the HR remit. HR teams are also increasingly interested in traveller wellbeing, personalisation, accessibility, travel options and ensuring that frequent travel doesn't negatively impact employee experience.
Bookers
Often PAs, EAs, or team administrators, bookers make travel arrangements on behalf of others. They need an efficient, easy-to-use booking process and clear visibility of what's in and out of policy. Increasingly, they also benefit from enhanced profile customisation in booking tools, offering visibility of travellers preferences.
The travellers themselves
At the end of the day, the people actually getting on planes and trains are the ones whose experience determines whether a travel programme works in practice. Traveller experience and satisfaction - balancing cost efficiency with a reasonable level of comfort and convenience - matters a great deal.
The role of a corporate travel policy
A travel policy is the backbone of any effective business travel programme. It sets out what employees are permitted to book, at what cost thresholds, with which suppliers, and through which channels - and what happens if they book outside of those guidelines.
A good travel policy strikes a balance. Too restrictive, and travellers may want to find workarounds - booking outside the system, expensing alternatives, and ultimately costing more. Too relaxed and cost control disappears. The best policies are built around data, regularly reviewed and communicated clearly to everyone who travels.
Typically, a travel policy will cover: class of travel, maximum nightly hotel rates, preferred suppliers, advance booking requirements, approvals processes and guidance on expenses. At Clarity, we work with organisations to develop and refine travel policies that are followed, and allign with your business goals. To do this, policy needs to be practical, fair, and built around how your people actually travel.
Duty of care in business travel
Duty of care is one of the most important aspects of business travel management. Legally, organisations have a responsibility to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of their employees whilst travelling for work. But beyond the legal obligation, it's simply the right thing to do.
This means knowing where your travellers are, being able to contact them in an emergency, having contingency plans in place for disruption, and providing access to support when things go wrong. It also means considering the risks associated with specific destinations and ensuring employees have the information they need before they travel.
When travel is managed through a single platform and TMC, duty of care becomes significantly easier to fulfil. Every booking is visible in one place and traveller tracking, alerts and emergency assistance can all be built into the programme. At Clarity, we provide our customers with our award-winning technology, ClarityGo, which offers a suite of technology products to book, manage and report on all things business travel.
Sustainable business travel
Sustainability is increasingly central to how organisations think about travel. With corporate responsibility commitments more than ever, travel, which can represent a significant chunk of an organisation's carbon footprint, is very much in focus. Travel and Procurement Managers have a big part to play in driving the sustainability message and ensuring that practices are prioritised. Sustainability teams often overlook travel as there is often a lack of defined objectives for Scope 3 emissions. This is perhaps not surprising in a large manufacturing business, where travel-related emissions (Scope 3) make up a relatively small percentage of the total emissions impact. But the impact can be a very different for a professional services business, where travel is likely to account for up to 70% of an organisations carbon footprint.
Of course, sustainable travel management isn't about eliminating business travel - it's about making smarter decisions. That could mean setting rail-first policies for shorter journeys, introducing carbon budgets alongside financial budgets, consolidating trips, or opting for lower-emission transport and accommodation options where possible.
What should you look for in a travel management company?
If you're looking to introduce or improve managed travel within your organisation, choosing the right TMC is one of the most important decisions you'll make. The right partner should feel like an extension of your team, not just a shiny booking platform.
Key things to consider include:
- Technology: Is there an intuitive online booking tool that supports all of your booking requirements?
- Service: What does out-of-hours support look like? Can travellers get help when they need it most?
- Reporting: Does the platform provide the spend visibility and data your finance and procurement teams need?
- Policy management: Can the TMC help you build and enforce a travel policy that works?
- Duty of care: What tools and services are in place to keep your travellers safe?
- Sustainability: Can the TMC help you understand and manage your travel-related emissions?
