Types of business travel exist for all sorts of reasons, from a one-day conference to a multi-day client meet.
Business travel is big business, one that’s expected to be worth over $800 billion by 2027. Modern ways of working may have placed emphasis on remote working, with almost 40% of workers working from home, and 25% enjoying a hybrid model according to Forbes, but that hasn’t stopped business travel from being a key part of many job roles.
In this blog, we’ll cover all you need to know about different types of business travel and how they can benefit your team.
Corporate travel is a proven way to positively impact your business. This can involve attending meetings, conferences, or training sessions, visiting clients or partners, exploring new markets, or collaborating with remote teams and offices. According to research, not only do nine-in-ten travellers say it helps grow stakeholder relationships,but it’s also crucial to a third of new sales. Business travel also serves as its own industry, supporting almost 284,000 full-time jobs in the UK alone. Essentially, business travel is an invaluable addition to any corporate schedule when it comes to growing and strengthening a brand.
Any organisation adding various types of corporate travel to their plans can also benefit from more than a stronger bottom line. According to our survey, many employees also cite personal development as a key benefit of professional travel, including positive impacts on:
Younger travellers value business travel the most out of all age demographics, though almost half of more mature business travellers (aged 46+) still report these trips as being positive to their mental health.
Trips can also lend themselves to collaboration, especially for colleagues who don’t often work together or know each other well, as travelling together is always a valuable team-building experience.
With all this in mind, offering varying types of business trips to your team may be a strategic way to grow employee satisfaction and engagement.
There are various types of business travel you may want to consider for your team:
While the features of different types of business travel can vary, the main goal of them all is ultimately to grow and strengthen the company, and for this, client meetings remain a vital part of a corporate calendar.
Client meetings can be held in your own office, in the client’s office, or at an external location. This can result in various types of corporate travel, whether that’s travelling to a company HQ in another country, or driving to the other side of the city. And with outside sales boasting a closing rate of 40%, meeting with prospective clients in person can reap dividends.
A vital part of your team’s professional development, conferences are a common reason for corporate travel. Keep a close eye on the calendar of conferences for your industry. While you may be able to attend some small-scale conferences on a more local level, the industry-leading events may require you (and many of the attendees) to travel, making these conferences unique opportunities for national, and even global, networking.
Research shows that collaboration and networking are the main draws of travelling to conferences (64%), with professional learning coming in second (53%). Combined with the aforementioned personal development that these types of business trips can offer, travelling to a conference can be a great way to support and nurture team members
A slightly different take on the types of corporate travel is the company retreat. Rather than sending team members to an external meeting or event, your corporate retreat is an internal event just for your business. It could be a trip to a resort, a city hotel, or something completely different. Company retreats aim to build the bonds between your team and discuss business goals away from the normal demands of the office, and the location may play a crucial role in encouraging creative thinking.
Arranging and successfully executing a positive company retreat also plays a critical role in terms of employee satisfaction and productivity, with over 80% of European employees saying the option to travel improves their overall job satisfaction and their output.
Especially important for agency or contract work, you may have secured a client, but frequent visits are key to keeping them. Research shows face-to-face communication is 34 times more effective than digital correspondence. This is also something to consider if your business is spread over multiple offices and you want teams to feel unified.
To maximise the value of these trips, depending on the amount or types of business travel involved, you might want to consider embedding a team member in a client office for extended periods, so it’s more rewarding all-round. You don’t want individuals to feel more like messengers than vital parts of the team.
A relatively new sort of travel, bleisure combines business and leisure to strike a healthy work/life balance that makes the most of a business trip. Whether team members are initially travelling for a client meet, a conference, or to visit another office, bleisure allows them to extend their trip by a few days to enjoy at their own leisure.
This approach can be hugely beneficial, allowing employees to relax and fully process everything they’ve learnt during their work hours of their trip, while enjoying personal travel. If this is something you’re happy for your team to do, make sure your travel policies outline where the company’s responsibilities end and where personal responsibilities, in terms of things like cost, begin.
Contractor business trips involve workers like engineers, builders, and technicians travelling to a job site for temporary projects. Unlike regular business travel for meetings, contractor trips are focused on getting projects across the line and can last anywhere from a few days to several months. The requirements for their accommodation will also be different, as they require longer-term accommodation that supports the needs of a team that's doing physical work.
Whatever the reason for your trip, there are several features of different types of business travel that are relatively universal, and should all be considered in your planning. Some key tips for planning corporate travel include:
No trip is worth taking without a solid plan of action in place. Once you’ve established the reason for the trip, you can start to plan around it, including which location, accommodations, and types of corporate travel you’ll need to consider, for example, a flight, a train, or a quick drive across town. Tripeden.com for Business is the perfect travel management solution for booking accommodation, flights, and car rentals for your team.
The length of your trip will impact just about everything else, and this itself is something that may need to be dictated by finance and upcoming workloads. The time allocated may also give you some leeway on the method of transport, or accommodation.
You may feel tempted to make the most of every minute of a trip by planning events and meetings well into the evening, but you’re unlikely to get the best from your team by forcing them to be ‘always on’. People need time to relax, reflect, and prepare for their next steps.
Make sure your team has read up on any and all travel policies, including how to handle expenses, codes of behaviour, and handling of company property, before they head out.
Keeping carbon footprints low is a promise many companies have publicly made, so make sure you’re keeping your promises. Consider if your trip can be made by train rather than plane, or if you’re staying at an eco-friendly property. Tripeden.com for Business lists over 3 million properties, making it simple to find the right fit.
Be prepared for things to go wrong, from cancelled flights and hotel rooms to technology not working on arrival. Make sure everyone is briefed on what to do if this happens, so it doesn’t impact the outcomes of your trip.
Check in with your team and make sure they’re comfortable travelling according to your intended times, destinations, or methods. Failing to do this can put team members under undue pressure if they aren’t able to manage personal commitments or other issues in tandem with business trip goals.
The overall cost of your business trip will differ on a case-by-case basis. Depending on the when, where, and why of your plans, the varying features of different types of business travel will all impact your budget. Our savings calculator (as well as our loyalty plans) can help you keep atop of these. Expenses include:
This could be a flight, a train, or a taxi ride, and based on the dates and distance, you might find one is considerably cheaper than the other.
There can be big differences in cost between a business hotel, a serviced apartment, or any other type of accommodation. Certain types of business trips might require a hotel close to a conference centre, whereas others, like a corporate retreat, might be able to settle on more flexible and affordable options.
Networking drinks, business lunches, corporate tickets to events, all these things can be a big portion of the budget and upper limits should be outlined well ahead of time.
Small expenses can quickly chip away at budgets. Do you have money assigned for things such as parking fees, city tax, or unexpected costs?
As mentioned, you should have solid travel policies in place so your team knows what to expect and how to conduct themselves for the different types of corporate travel mentioned above. You can use our travel policy builder, and your policies should include:
Effective business travel management requires effective processes, including having travel policies and budgeting tools in place. As remote work continues to shape how we do business, mastering travel planning may be key to future-proofing your brand. For streamlined processes and effortless admin when it comes to accommodation, as well as the best user experience for your team, use Tripeden.com for Business. Choose from over 3 million properties, book for up to 30 team members at once, and enjoy easy expense tracking to help you stick to budget and maintain control over your travel spending.
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