Business Travel Apps and Technology: A Guide to Managing Corporate Travel

Corporate travel has evolved considerably in recent years, driven by changing expectations around how easily and efficiently people can travel for work. Today, business trips need to be simple to book, straightforward to manage and cause as little disruption as possible for employees.

At the same time, businesses are under increasing pressure to manage the cost and complexity of travel without compromising the experience for employees.

That’s created a growing ecosystem of business travel apps and technology designed to solve different parts of the corporate travel journey. But more tools can just as easily mean more complexity. The real value of travel technology is whether it solves the problems a business actually has and makes travel easier to manage for both employees and travel teams.

So where does technology make the biggest difference in corporate travel, and what should businesses consider when choosing the tools they use?

A business travel app is technology designed to make corporate travel easier to organise, manage or navigate. Depending on the tool, that could mean helping a company manage bookings and expenses, giving travel managers greater visibility over trips, or helping employees access the information and services they need while travelling.

That last point is important because business travel apps aren't necessarily used only by the people managing a travel programme. Many sit directly in the traveller's hands. An employee might use an app to check their itinerary, submit an expense or access travel benefits during their journey. Making those tasks easier for employees can also make the wider travel programme easier to manage, reducing manual work and giving teams a clearer view of each trip.

For businesses, this means looking past what a platform can do behind the scenes. How easy is it for employees to use? Does it solve a genuine problem during the journey? And does it connect with the wider way the organisation manages corporate travel?

Corporate travel technology can support almost every stage of a business trip. And as businesses evolve in how they manage travel, so has the role technology plays in it.

For employees, much of that technology simply becomes part of the trip. Ideally, they shouldn't have to think too hard about the systems behind it. It should make travelling for work feel easier, not give them another process to manage.

Booking and travel management

Booking technology can make it easier for employees to arrange their own trips without taking travel outside the company's rules. Budgets, preferred suppliers and approval requirements can all be incorporated into the booking process, so employees have clearer parameters when arranging travel.

For businesses choosing this type of technology, usability and control are crucial. An effective booking and travel management tool gives employees flexibility to arrange suitable trips and travel managers the oversight to keep bookings within company policy.

Expense and spend management

Anyone who has travelled for work knows how quickly receipts and expenses can pile up. Technology can take some of that admin out of the trip by giving employees easier ways to:

• capture expenses while travelling

• store receipts and spending records

• submit claims

• check whether spending falls within company policy

Finance and travel teams can also use this for more consistent spend data to understand where travel budgets are going, identify patterns that may need attention which leads to better manage and reduce business travel expenses.

Itinerary and journey management

A booking confirmation is only useful if you can find it when you need it. During a business trip, employees may be moving between flight details, hotel reservations, meeting information and changes to their original itinerary.

Keeping relevant travel information accessible on a mobile device gives employees a simpler way to keep track of the journey without searching through emails or switching between multiple sources.

For the business, making information easier to access can also reduce avoidable questions and the amount of manual support employees need while travelling.

Traveller support and disruption management

Even a well-planned business trip can change quickly. A delayed flight or missed connection can leave an employee needing information or support at exactly the point when they are away from their usual workplace.

Real-time alerts and access to updated journey information can help travellers respond more quickly when that happens. In some cases, technology may also give them a direct route to support or allow them to manage changes themselves.

When travel plans go wrong, employees need a straightforward way to get help through their company’s travel programme. That makes accessibility and real-time information important considerations when evaluating travel technology.

Airport experiences and travel benefits

Not every piece of corporate travel technology is about managing the trip itself. Some of it can improve what the employee experiences along the way, particularly at the airport.

Through an app or digital platform, travellers may be able to access:

• airport lounges

• fast-track security

• airport dining and other travel benefits

• digital membership or access credentials

These services can make time at the airport more comfortable and convenient for employees. Making them easy to access digitally can also help businesses get more value from the travel benefits included within their programme.

Reporting and programme management

Bookings, expenses, policy decisions and programme usage all generate useful data. Bringing that information together can give travel managers a much clearer view of how the programme is actually being used.

So what is worth measuring in a corporate travel programme? That depends on the priorities of the business. Travel spend, booking behaviour, policy compliance and benefit usage can each reveal something different about programme performance.

The point isn't to collect more data for the sake of it. It's to give the people managing travel enough information to spot patterns, identify where something isn't working and make better decisions about what happens next.

The most sophisticated platform isn’t necessarily the most useful one. What matters is whether the technology fits the way people actually travel and the way the organisation needs to manage that travel.

For employees, that starts with usability. A tool that adds extra steps, is difficult to access on the move or requires too much manual input can quickly become another source of friction. Adoption matters too: even the right functionality has limited value if employees avoid using it.

On the business side, there are a few practical considerations worth assessing:

• Integration: Can it work with the systems already used for booking, expenses, HR or travel management?

• Visibility: Does it give the right teams access to useful travel, spend or programme data?

• Travel policy: Can company travel rules be incorporated without making the employee experience unnecessarily restrictive?

• Support: Is help easy to access when employees are travelling and something goes wrong?

• Scalability: Can the technology continue to work as travel volumes, locations or business requirements change?

There’s also the question of how well different technologies work together. A fragmented experience can leave employees moving between platforms and businesses managing information across separate systems. The aim should be a travel programme where the technology removes complexity rather than creating more of it.

A corporate travel policy sets the expectations around how employees should travel, but technology can make those expectations easier to follow in practice. Instead of relying on employees to remember spending limits, preferred suppliers or approval requirements, relevant rules can be incorporated into the systems they already use to arrange and manage travel.

That can make compliance feel less like an extra task. An employee booking a trip, for example, can see which options fall within policy before making a choice, while approval processes can be triggered where they’re actually needed.

Technology can also help businesses understand how well the policy is working. Booking and expense data can highlight where employees regularly go outside agreed parameters, where processes are creating friction or where the policy itself may need to change.

Technology shouldn’t replace a clear corporate travel policy. Its role is to make that policy easier to put into practice for both the people managing it and the employees expected to follow it.

The best corporate travel technology doesn’t need to solve every part of business travel. It needs to solve the right problems for the people using it.

For businesses, that might mean better visibility over travel spend, stronger policy compliance or less manual administration. For employees, it could be as simple as having the information, support and travel benefits they need within easy reach.

Those priorities should ultimately point in the same direction. When technology makes business travel easier for employees, it can also make the wider programme easier to manage.

As businesses review the technology behind their travel programmes, the starting point should be the experience they want to create and the problems they need to solve — then finding the tools that genuinely support both.

Looking to improve corporate travel programme? Learn how Dragonpass for Business Travel can help you give travellers easier access to benefits and services throughout their journey.