Business travel management for small businesses

For small businesses, it pays to be connected. Just like their larger counterparts, small enterprises are leveraging the opportunities that corporate travel offers. However, with limited resources, tighter budgets, and a lack of travel management expertise, SMEs can find it hard to keep up.

If you work for a small business, we've put together some suggestions for how you can make the most of your business travel—all the same opportunities, tailored to your unique challenges. Below, we explore how strategic travel management can help small enterprises maximise their resources without compromising on comfort or success.

While small businesses may have many of the same goals as large companies in their business travel, they face unique challenges. We've put together a handy guide to the key differences in corporate travel between small and large businesses:

Given these differences, small businesses require a strategic approach to travel management to make their corporate travel efficient and rewarding.

Small businesses face unique challenges in the corporate travel world, like tight budgets and limited resources. A strategic approach to travel management can help SMEs overcome these challenges and ensure efficient and rewarding business travel. A successful strategy balances cost savings and efficiency with comfort and convenience—minimal resources, maximum reward. 

Here are some valuable techniques that small businesses can use to overcome their business travel challenges:

1. Streamline your business trips
   
   
2. Make your travel planning strategic
   
   
3. Make the most of your resources
   
   
4. Leverage corporate loyalty programmes
   
   
5. Travel sustainably
   
   
6. Use online booking tools

Below, we've gone through these steps in more detail to show how your business can use them to transform your travel experience.

With fewer annual corporate trips, each journey carries increased pressure for productivity and success. Travel needs to be streamlined to ensure that trips align with company objectives. You should only travel when absolutely necessary, and make the most of it when you do. That means reserving travel for essential commitments, keeping to a tight budget, sending a small team, and fitting multiple events and commitments into one trip.

In order to keep your travel streamlined and efficient, it's essential to build a robust company travel policy. The company policy should clearly outline which business activities are eligible for business travel, to keep travel reserved for important commitments. You can use our comprehensive guide to building a travel policy to ensure cost-efficiency and policy compliance on your business trips, all while keeping focused on your business objectives.

In small businesses, travel planning is often an extra responsibility for employees, meaning valuable time is spent researching trips and making travel arrangements. It's useful to streamline your approach by being methodical and following an efficient process when arranging travel. This ensures that trips are well-organised while allowing employees to prioritise their usual workload. Providing a travel planning checklist to employees can be a great way to ensure they have everything they need to book a successful trip.

To streamline your travel planning and ensure no wasted time or money, you can use our step-by-step guide to successful business planning. We cover everything you need to make your next business trip smooth and successful. Every efficient trip starts with efficient planning. 

Unlike larger companies, small enterprises usually operate on tighter travel budgets. Travel planning should focus on cost-effectiveness since SMEs are under more pressure to return on investment and must minimise travel expenses.

Keeping travel costs low requires careful expense management. You should ensure that your travel policy outlines clear spending limits and reimbursement processes. This enables you to make the most of a tight budget, and ensures that travellers know what types of travel spending are covered. 

Another great way to keep travel costs low is to make use of corporate rates. We know that most SMEs don't have established relationships with hotel partners, so we offer the Accor Business Offer Auto-Enrol travel programme, specially designed for small companies.

You can access exclusive rates at over 20 handpicked brands in our collection of 5,500+ hotels worldwide, ranging from Luxury to Premium to Economy. Make the most of your budget, without compromising on comfort. Signing up is completely free, and you can access all the benefits within 24 hours of applying. 

Due to limited resources, small businesses can often struggle to build a corporate travel programme that's cost-efficient as well as sustainable. In fact, travelling sustainably can be kind to your budget as well as the planet. For example, green travel options like public transport are much more affordable than private transportation. For more advice on building a corporate travel programme that's cost-effective and sustainable, you can use our top tips for sustainable travel.

Accor is committed to making your stay as sustainable as possible. Our hotels are designed with sustainability in mind from the outset, so they're the ideal choice for sustainable business travel. You can discover budget-friendly, sustainable hotels among our top picks of corporate hotels. We also offer the opportunity to earn ALL Reward points by 'Skipping the clean' on your hotel stay, so you can reduce your water and energy consumption while saving money on future travel.

Researching and booking accommodation can be time-consuming, especially in a small business with no dedicated travel manager. Dedicated booking platforms for business travel can help employees make bookings quickly and efficiently, keep track of reservations, and ensure their choices are suitable for business travel.

Accor's corporate travel management platform can be a game-changer for small businesses. Our online booking tool streamlines hotel bookings, so there's no time wasted. You can see all your reservations in one place, making it easy to cancel or amend your bookings.

Instead of spending hours of precious time researching accommodation to find accommodation appropriate for business travel, let the travel experts do the work for you. Accor's curated selection of business travel hotels all provide seamless comfort and specialised services, so you can rest assured that all your business travel needs will be taken care of. Explore our collection of 5,500+ hotels worldwide to find the ideal hotel for your next business trip.

With the right strategies, small businesses can use travel management to transform their business travel experience. When you plan efficiently and manage your expenses, tighter budgets and limited resources don't have to be an obstacle. If you want to learn more about travel management, you can check out our article on successful business travel planning. You can also discover our complete guide to building a corporate travel policy.