Business travel is back, but it isn’t back to “normal.” Airfares have been volatile, hotel rates in major cities remain elevated, and remote-first teams now travel in bursts around offsites and customer events rather than steady weekly rhythms. In that environment, travel spend can drift upward quietly—one late booking here, one out-of-policy hotel there—until finance sees the quarter-end number and asks, “How did we get here?”
Travel management is the discipline that prevents that surprise. Done well, it connects policy, booking behavior, and spend visibility so leaders can steer travel like any other investment. Many companies start by exploring benchmarks and program models from specialist advisers such as Harridge Business, then tailor the approach to their own risk profile, traveler mix, and growth stage. The point isn’t to squeeze every trip; it’s to ensure each trip is intentional, trackable, and priced as fairly as the market allows.
Why travel spend is harder to control than it looks
Travel is a decentralized purchase made by busy people. Unlike software or office rent, it’s bought one itinerary at a time, often under time pressure, and it mixes hard costs (fares, room nights) with behavior-driven costs (change fees, no-shows, upgrades, taxis versus rail).
Where “leakage” typically happens
Spend leakage usually comes from patterns, not scandals. Common examples include booking too close to departure, choosing flexible fares by default, splitting a trip across multiple booking channels, or expensing meals without clarity on per diems. Another quiet culprit is unused tickets and missed hotel cancellations—costs that feel unavoidable until you track them.
What a modern travel management program actually does
Travel management isn’t just a booking tool. It’s a set of controls and feedback loops that shape decisions before, during, and after travel.
Policy that matches reality (and gets followed)
A policy that reads like a legal document won’t change behavior. The best policies are short, specific, and designed around the trips people actually take. For example: “Economy on flights under six hours, premium economy allowed above six,” or “Hotels must be within a 20-minute commute of the meeting site.” When travelers understand the “why” (cost, safety, rest), compliance rises.
Equally important is making the compliant choice the easy choice. If your approved rates and preferred suppliers show up first in the booking flow, travelers don’t feel policed; they feel supported.
Centralized data that turns spend into decisions
You can’t manage what you can’t see. A travel management program consolidates booking and expense data so you can answer basic questions quickly: Which teams travel most? What’s the average lead time? Where are we paying last-minute premiums? Are we overbuying flexible fares? Those insights let you target fixes without punishing everyone.
Practical levers to reduce cost without hurting the trip
Cost control works best when it protects the purpose of travel—sales, delivery, relationships—while removing friction and waste.
Pre-trip approvals and simple budgeting
Approvals don’t have to be bureaucratic. For high-cost trips, a lightweight pre-trip check (purpose, estimated cost, client or event) prevents “nice-to-have” travel from slipping through. Some firms use cost ceilings by route or city pair, nudging travelers to book earlier or pick alternate times.
Smarter supplier and rate strategy
Preferred rates still matter, but the strategy has evolved. Dynamic hotel pricing means you need continuous monitoring, not a set-and-forget annual negotiation. For air, focus on share commitments only where your volume is real; otherwise you risk locking into higher fares. Ground transport is often the easiest win: clear rules on rideshare versus taxi, rail where it’s competitive, and when to rent a car.
Managing changes, credits, and exceptions
Disruptions are where budgets get shredded. A centralized process for exchanges and cancellations keeps fees predictable and makes sure airline credits don’t expire in a drawer. Set rules for when flexibility is worth paying for—client-facing meetings, multi-city itineraries, weather-prone seasons—and when it isn’t. Give travelers a simple exception path, too. If people can explain a legitimate need in two sentences, they’ll stay inside the program rather than going rogue. That discipline also improves duty of care during fast-moving incidents.
Traveler experience is a spend-control tool
Here’s the counterintuitive truth: traveler experience drives compliance, and compliance drives savings. If booking is painful or support is slow, people will book elsewhere “just this once,” and the program erodes. Strong support also reduces change fees by resolving disruptions quickly and reusing credits.
Measuring success: the KPIs that matter
A credible program uses a small set of metrics and reviews them monthly. One useful approach is to track:
- Average booking lead time by team
- Out-of-policy booking rate (and the top reasons)
- Average ticket price on key routes versus market
- Hotel average daily rate and attachment to preferred properties
- Unused ticket value recovered or reissued
The real value is the conversation these numbers enable. If a team’s lead time is low, is it due to reactive customer work? If preferred hotel attachment is weak, are preferred properties in the wrong locations? Metrics should trigger problem-solving, not finger-pointing.
The bottom line
Travel management controls spend by shaping choices upstream and learning from results downstream. When policy is clear, data is visible, and the traveler experience is smooth, savings follow naturally—often without reducing travel at all. The companies that win here treat travel as a managed portfolio: invest where it pays back, tighten where it leaks, and keep adapting as the market shifts.
