From virtual meetings to remote work, it’s no surprise that the business travel landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. The way we conduct business, across a range of sectors and industries has forever changed — and, unsurprisingly, so has the requirements for business travel.
In this guide, we’ll look at the new face of business travel — taking you through the data to examine what it means to be purposeful with your corporate trips, as well as how this can lead to cost-effective and sustainable business travel practices.
What is purposeful travel?
Being purposeful when it comes to business travel involves considering your strategic approach to corporate travel at every level of planning. By outlining specific business goals and objectives, it becomes easier to optimise your trip in a way that helps you to achieve them.
This goes beyond conventional travel arrangements and places an emphasis on value and outcome. In this way, purposeful travel optimises travel budgets to ensure that every trip contributes meaningfully to the organisation’s success.
This can look like staying on a trip longer in order to schedule more meetings, booking further in advance to get the best deals, and choosing more sustainable travel options. All of these can help you optimise your budget by achieving business goals that are likely to increase ROI, growing your business and offsetting higher fares in the process.
Here are just some of the ways that purposeful travel can benefit your business travel programme:
- Increased ROI: from meeting face-to-face with clients and training new hires to securing new contracts, having a clear goal for your business travel can yield clear and measurable growth for your business.
- Increased productivity: gone are the days of single-meeting business trips. Instead, by aligning trips with specific objectives, like conferences and site visits, you can help to maximise productivity and minimise unnecessary travel expenses.
- Talent development and networking: purposeful travel can also be used for employee development initiatives. Attending conferences, workshops and training programmes. These experiences benefit your talent pool, and help you to stay updated with industry trends.
Making business travel sustainable
What if we told you that purposeful and sustainable business travel go hand in hand? With 83% of business leaders saying that sustainability programme activities directly create both short and long-term value for their organisation, let’s explore how purposeful travel can help you add to this growth.
In recent years, sustainability has become a key priority for many businesses. But ensuring your business travel strategy meets your company-wide sustainability objectives is no easy task. This is where being purposeful about your business travel can help.
Purposeful business travel is all about considering your specific business goals. For many, this includes prioritising sustainable choices. By making purposeful choices then, you can also reach sustainability targets by being more mindful about your business travel.
This can involve choosing more sustainable transportation like opting for train travel for shorter journeys instead of relying on planes. Or, finding accommodation that has implemented sustainability initiatives. By booking in advance and taking longer trips, you can significantly decrease your carbon footprint and take your time in sourcing more eco-friendly options that align with your business goals.
Cost-effective business travel
Balancing cost-effective choices with more sustainable travel options can sometimes be difficult and contradictory. Train travel, for example, is a more sustainable option than taking a flight, however, train fares are often more expensive.
The good news is that this challenge can be mitigated with careful and purposeful planning. And this is where an experienced TMC can be called upon to support you in this planning.
But, first, what does cost-effective business travel look like?
Cost-effective business travel is all about optimising resources and maximising value, whilst minimising unnecessary expenses. In this way, being purposeful about your travel can help you do just that. By cutting out trips that lack a clear purpose, and looking into developing your business goals instead, you can create cost-effective trips that maximise ROI and minimise waste by being more purposeful when planning.
Whilst managing your corporate travel programme can become expensive if you don’t have the right tools and expertise at your fingertips — booking your transport and accommodation well in advance and choosing alternate travel like trains or coaches can help you to start seeing your budget spent more efficiently.
Ultimately, by being more purposeful in your travel overall, you can optimise your travel expenses. This helps to become more cost-effective by maximising ROI, and ensuring that resources are allocated strategically according to your goals. This, in turn, can help you to meet your sustainability goals as well as your goals for ROI and growth — all of which are essential for long-term success in today’s business landscape.
Travel with purpose today
Making your travel more purposeful, sustainable and cost-effective is essential to your business’ success both now and in the future. We hope that this guide has helped you to feel more confident in making more mindful travel decisions.
If you have further questions or want to learn more about how ACE Travel Management can support your business goals, get in touch with our team.