Saving More Money When Business Traveling

For many a different reason, businesses need to keep a close eye on the travel costs they reimburse via expense reports. Many organizations need to send their employees out on business trips pretty often, after all - so keeping costs low needs to be a major priority. If traveling expenses balloon up, then the organization at hand will have to cut down on the number of trips they finance over the course of a given year.

Luckily, there are a number of different ways that business travelers - and the organizations financing them - can keep their costs low during a trip. We've listed a number of different suggestions below. Travelers would do well to keep them in mind while they're away from the office - and businesses would do well to stress the importance of keeping costs low among their team prior to those trips.

Book your tickets and lodging early Many business travelers wait until the last minute to book their flights, or are forced to book their flights at the last minute because their trip wasn't prepared well in advance. Yet, this will increase costs significantly: numerous studies and surveys have illustrated that plane tickets and other lodging costs come in a much higher price when booked in the week leading up to the trip, as opposed to when they're booked more than a week in advance.

Obviously, business trips are sometimes required on short notice, and those situations can't be avoided. Yet whenever possible, your employees and your business should book the airplane tickets, hotel rooms and more for your trips up to two weeks before the employee is sent out. That way, you'll ensure that you won't be overpaying simply because you booked your flight at the wrong time.

Research whenever possible Not all hotels are created equal - and business travelers would do well to investigate their options before booking their lodging. One resource could be Certify's SpendSmart pages, which collects reviews of lodging accommodations and other services logged by users across the country. With SpendSmart and other comparable resources, business travelers can ensure they get the most bang for their buck on every cent spent via their expense report. That'll help immensely in keeping costs down to a manageable level.

Don't hesitate to eat in on occasion - a hotel room with a kitchen is worth the cost We all know how busy business travelers are. For that reason, it's understandable that those traveling often eat every meal at a restaurant - you're working around the clock, after all, so who has time to cook?

Yet restaurants contribute to some of the largest costs listed on many employees expense reports. So, if your travelers get an opportunity to book a hotel room with a kitchen, they should take it - and they should cook their own meals whenever possible.

Stay within company expense policy Finally, one of the most important parts of keeping business trip expenses down: companies need to set and rigidly enforce travel expense policies to ensure that employees don't spend exorbitant amounts on lodging, meals and other related costs.