Business Class vs. First Class The Ultimate Guide for Corporate Travelers

Business Class vs. First Class: The Ultimate Guide for Corporate Travelers

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Navigating the world of premium air travel can be complex for corporate travelers. Whether you’re weighing the benefits of business class versus first class, understanding the nuanced differences can save your company money and enhance travel comfort. This comprehensive guide breaks down the key distinctions, amenities, and value propositions of business and first-class travel, helping executives and corporate travel managers make informed decisions that balance luxury, productivity, and budget efficiency.

6-ways-to-reduce-the-carbon-footprint-of-your-business-travel-at-atyourprice

6 ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your business travel

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As the economic recovery gains pace after the pandemic, we are witnessing a steady rise in business travel.

Previously organizations have only implemented policies to manage the costs of travel. However, nowadays companies are also fixated on how much carbon is being emitted because of their employees’ use of flights, cars, etc., for various business needs.

Incorporating environmental sustainability into business travel can help achieve several objectives, including cutting wasteful spending, reducing regulatory exposure, and building a culture of responsible corporate citizenship.

Here are several ways to simultaneously reduce the carbon footprint and cost of your company’s business trips.

Schedule virtual meetings

The most effective way to reduce the carbon footprint from business travel is to avoid it altogether unless necessary. Virtual meetings save the organization time and money, along with bringing down its carbon footprint. Aside from that, virtual meetings have proven to be popular among employees, as it saves them the hassle of travelling.

Encourage alternative modes of transportation

According to Reuters, flights account for about 90% of business travel emissions. So, it would be prudent to ask your employees to prefer environment-friendly transportation for business travel. According to the research, travel by train or bus is up to 90% more carbon-efficient than air travel.

Create a sustainable business travel policy

On average, traveling in business class almost doubles the carbon emissions. Having a travel policy that offers incentives for choosing sustainable and cost-efficient means of transport will go a long way in helping companies cut down on their carbon footprint.

Ensuring that your travel policy is focused on sustainability will also help you in getting your company various tax breaks that have been put in place by governments with a green agenda.

Evaluate the impact of your business travel

Organizations should use a carbon footprint calculator to measure the impact of business travel on the environment. With such a tool, you can assess where most of your company’s carbon emissions are coming from and where improvement can take place. Utilizing a carbon footprint calculator is also a great way to assure investors of your commitment to long-term climate action.

Choose carbon-neutral airlines

“Creating a sustainable aviation industry is perhaps the greatest challenge for the sector since the invention of the airplane.” —Bryan Del Monte- Former pilot and president of The Aviation Agency.

Major companies are setting aggressive carbon-reduction goals across their operations, significantly cutting carbon footprint from business travel. In fact, some major airlines are implementing carbon offset programs to mitigate carbon emissions from their airline operation. So, organizations can choose carbon-neutral airlines to achieve sustainability goals for the benefit of the environment.

Electric vehicles- smart choice to reduce carbon footprint

Electric vehicles are the wise choice for a lesser carbon footprint. Businesses can reduce carbon emissions by encouraging employees to use electric cars or bikes for business trips. Include electric vehicles in your company travel policy, so your business travelers can bring a positive impact on the global and local environment.

Conclusion

Companies should promote sustainable travel practices to offset their carbon footprint. When business travel is necessary, organizations can prefer sustainable transport – switching from aviation to rail for shorter journeys, avoiding business class flights for longer trips, and identifying low-emission airlines. Further, you need to ensure that business travel is only considered when there is no other option.

Tackle your business travel costs and carbon emissions and start making a difference with our sustainable business travel management platform.

Schedule an AtYourPrice demo today by emailing marketig@infinitisoftware.net!

6-Business-Travel-Cost-Saving-Strategies-every-CFO-should-Consider-AtYourPrice

6 Business Travel Cost Saving Strategies every CFO should Consider

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CFOs in most companies are always tasked with two concern areas – How to control costs and how to introduce controls within the process.  Business travel is a significant cost head and is also a subject that’s directly linked to employee morale.  Travel Admin Managers and CFO’s have to tread a delicate equilibrium to balance these seeming contrarian narratives. Good news is competent, and experienced CFO’s across large organizations and MNC’s manage this well and here is how. Following are the five key business travel cost-saving (not cutting!) strategies that you may adopt in your organization.

Business Travel needs a Strategic Plan

Business Travel is both a cost head as well as a leading performance indicator. Hence the CFO has to think and prepare a strategic plan with an end objective of saving cost. However, the question is how? Well, CFOs must make use of travel analytics (by trips, functions, employee grades, cities, trip rescheduling, cancellations and so forth) to help frame strategies that effectively control costs. Further, aligning strategies to provide a traveler-centric experience and reduce trip friction contribute to smarter travel decisions.

Adopt Technology to Reduce Costs

Automation is not a choice anymore. It’s real and can save costs. Automating travel management system in your organization has to be your no.1 strategic priority.  To move it to a cloud and also on mobile ensures that your travelers can access the system for booking, rescheduling their business travel on the move. Remember, early information from the direct user means cost saving.  It also creates trusts and ownership amongst the business travelers to own up to their actions. Similarly, amongst the travel desk staff and accounts functions, it creates speed and transparency over settlements.  

Encourage Policy Compliance and exercise smart controls

As a CFO, you should encourage all the business heads including HR to frame a travel policy that’s detailed and comprehensive. Next up, hand this policy over to your business travel management partner. Periodic monitoring of the dashboard to track performance goes without saying. For the employees to buy into the following policy guidelines, it is essential to involve them in the conversation. Recurrent policy reviews involving the employees is yet another vital way to encourage compliance.

Make cost-effectiveness as part of your company’s culture

The business travel cost is dependent on many factors: travel planning cycle, seasonal demand, and itinerary, trip rescheduling and cancellations, choice of hotels, local travel among several others.  To be cost-effective inculcate the culture of planning business travel early (at least a week in advance) amongst all employees of your organization.  Be practical and create flexibility in daily allowances and how employees use them.

Partner with a Competent Travel Management Company

 A corporate travel management company is an option that CFOs should consider.  A right partner not only helps you save cost for the company but also drive the agenda of better business traveler satisfaction. Fruitful relationships give rise to many benefits in the form of discounted airfares, air travel upgrades, priority services, and lower trip rescheduling penalties. Exclusive tie-ups with airlines or a nationally present budget hotels chain can bring in both significant savings and value-added deals.

On the other hand, to improve the business traveler experience, freebies like employees continuing to get a frequent flyer and loyalty rewards program goes a long way in enhancing traveler satisfaction.

Make business travel your strategic priority and find the right travel management partners to execute your strategy to save cost and improve the business traveler experience. Go for it.

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5 Reasons Why Corporates Should Automate Their Business Travel

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The benefit of any technology used in business process automation implies an increase in its efficiency.  With business travel happening more frequently than ever the question every corporate need to ask itself – How to increase the efficiency of Business Travel Management process?  A sizeable diversified corporation typically has an in-house travel desk that interacts with the employees and an outsourced travel agency to fulfil the travel requirements. This is an archaic process which has a long chain of stakeholders (internal as well external) with the limited scope of improvisation and feedback.

In today’s world, there are many exciting and efficient tech-enabled processes and partners who can offer not just travel bookings but also can help you with real-time analytics and a complete cloud-based mobile-enabled solution that provides better business traveler experience as well as reduces travel cost.  Here are  5 simple reasons  why you may want to  migrate  your Business Travel Management process to a  technologically-driven  Business Travel Process :

Technology simplifies processes

Typically, travel desk personnel spend endless hours gathering information on the cheapest flights and hotel bookings. By the time the right itinerary is worked out, the prices have already soared.  All the stakeholders:  Business Traveler, Travel Admins, and Manager is all stressed due to the intricacy of the process. Automation ensures that itinerary finalization including flight details, hotel bookings, taxi drop & pick-ups managed through the Web/ Mobile application with approval from the Business Traveler in a click of the mouse.

Technology & Transparency go together

When the hotel and flight bookings are made manually by the travel desk personnel, it reaches a point when tracking the bookings becomes next to impossible. In companies, some business travelers may make out-of-policy bookings, last-minute cancellations. Consequently, there are delays in approvals. However not so with the Business Travel Management Tool. Here every transaction is dated and time-stamped.  There can be no out-of-policy transaction.  Also, all the bookings are initiated by the traveler leaving no scope for error or miscommunication.

Business Travel within Policy Guidelines

Surprising but true, many large corporates do not have a well-structured and comprehensive travel policy.  There are loopholes like the spending limit, deadline for submission of travel expense bills, rules for trip cancellation. Employees often misuse them. The travel desk and accounts departments go through the unpleasant task of scrutinizing and penalizing defaulters. An automated Business Travel Solution places appropriate built-in controls to restrict unwanted transactions.

Employee Participation

In the manual travel management system, the ownership of employee is limited once he has given a travel requisition through email or otherwise.  However, the automated management application, the choice of booking flights, hotels, check-in & check-out time is all initiated by the employee. They have the complete choice to select the service as per eligibility.  Moreover, trip cancellation or rescheduling processed through mobile application on-the-go.

Easier Management

One of the frequent sources of disputes between the business traveler and the travel desk is out-of-policy bookings.  Last-minute cancellations and rescheduling are the second. Mails over emails are exchanged between various stakeholders to negotiate the least cost itinerary. However, by the time the employee approves the same, the prices have gone up again.

In the automated business travel management system, flow of information in real-time making the governance and management of travel easy.  This reduces delays in bookings and saves money.  Over a period the company can do away with the travel desk altogether.

Five-reasons-why-travel-reports-should-be-your-travel-buying-priority

Five reasons why travel reports should be your travel buying priority

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For most companies,  travel costs signify an important annual expense. These costs are not only travel costs but include costs that incur during the travel. In such a case, travel reports play a key role.  It provides an extensive view of the expenses incurred. It also helps in reducing costs without encumbering the business goals of the company.

Let’s look at some reasons, the presence of travel reports in the travel management solution should be your travel buying priority.

Optimization of costs spend

Latest technologies today provide customized and effectual reporting at the traveler’s expense. These include analytics and predictive forecasting. The scope of the reporting includes real-time dashboards for SLA transparency. These reports consider all three account priorities, which includes travel logistics, performance, and management.

Data consolidation and reporting

With big data in travel management, data consolidation offers attractive opportunities. Data enables predictive analysis based on prior trips or preferred choices of the traveler. It helps to manage travel spend categories or customize content choices.

End to end Solution

The rise in business travel predicts a fundamental change in the way travel happens. Data consolidation and reporting help the travelers to manage their booking. Use of technology for travel makes travel process easy. The information meets the strategic objectives of cost control.

Adherence to company policy

Travel management reporting offers road-map on travel spending patterns and also helps to track and analyze travel spends. These reports allow the company to verify adherence to travel policy. This further helps to analyze, budget and control corporate travel expenses.

Access to information

 The tailor reports provided helps to maximize the value of travel costs and budget. The tracking and analysis of travel spend help you to identify cost-saving opportunities. Reports are accessible to the employee, department, or anyone in the hierarchy.  The interactive charts and dynamic graphs highlight the cost-saving possibilities. It also gives a picture of the broader travel trends across the organization.

So why still continue the ancient style of managing travel, when travel management solution gives you the perfect peace of mind with travel reports. Embrace technology, embrace growth.

How-to-claim-input-tax-credit-for-your-business-travel

How to claim input tax credit for your business travel?

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GST is one of the biggest tax reforms which changed the way we Indians, carry out business. GST acronym for Goods And Service Tax was launched with the primary intention to reduce all the indirect taxes into one single tax structure.

But then the sudden introduction of a new tax structure has left most of us bewildered. This can be attributed to the fact of our lack of knowledge but in reality, GST has made life a lot simpler and reduced the number of complicated tax calculations. The best part about GST is, it has helped all the corporate people to save their business expenses through the process of claiming their input credits.

What is Input tax credit?

In simple words, input tax credit will help you to reduce the tax you are paying on sales, from the tax you have already paid on the purchase.

For example, if you are a corporate :

The tax you pay for the sales of good is Rs 500

The tax you have already paid when you made a travel is Rs 400

So, You can claim input credit of Rs 400 and pay only Rs 100 in taxes.

Impact of GST on Business Travel

Business travel forms an integral part for any organization. In most companies, it is one of the highest spending sectors. Corporates can control these expenses and claim input tax credit through GST compliant invoices.

Economy class air travel will become cheaper whereas business class will become dearer. Similarly, non AC travel in trains will not be affected while ticket prices for AC trains will go up marginally.

Economy class: 5 %

Business class: 12 %

Non AC train tickets: Tax free

AC train tickets: 5 %

What do you require to claim input tax credit?

People traveling for business purposes are now requested to submit GST compliant invoices to avail input tax credit benefits under the goods and services (GST) regime. Make sure your business travel solution provider is GST ready so that you do not lose out on the benefits. It is essential you have GST compliant invoice from both the airline and your travel solution provider to claim the input tax credit.

Let’s have a look how your travel solution provider can help you to claim input tax credit :

Consider ABC corporate needs to claim input tax credit and AtYourPrice is its business travel solution provider. ABC corporate need to provide AtYourPrice with its GST identification number. AtYourPrice helps ABC corporate to obtain the GST compliant invoice from respective airline service provider. Also, it issues invoices for travel bookings according to GST compliance with the following information mentioned on it.

ABC corporate’s Registered GST number

ABC corporate’s Registered contact number

ABC corporate’s Registered GST Billing Address

ABC corporate’s Registered E-Mail Address

AtYourPrice’s GST number

Whenever any employee, books air ticket AtYourPrice auto captures all the details of ABC corporate and provides a GST compliant invoice for each booking. Hence by having GST compliant invoices from travel vendors, corporates can upload their bills into the government website which will help them in claiming the input credits on business travel expenses.

If you are a corporate and looking to claim your Input Tax Credit with GST compliant invoices, AtYourPrice is the perfect fit for you. AtYourPrice is a robust web-based business travel solution that automates travel planning, requisition, approval, fulfillment, invoicing, reporting and duty of care. Today AtYourPrice is a travel solution choice for more than 250 corporates in India.

Click on the video link, to know more about how you can claim the input tax credit for your business travel.

The list of features and benefits of business travel approval workflow

How to create the Ultimate Business Travel Approval Workflow?

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Creating business travel approval workflow is one of the most crucial steps in preparing the organization for an efficient and effective Business travel management system.  It offers many benefits concerning better traveler experience, reduced work burden for the travel admins desk and savings for the organization. The CFO’s usually form a small working group from the respective department; HR and Travel Admin to assess their current business travel workflow and redesign it.  However, the best advice can come from Corporate Travel Management Solutions providers who are experts in designing a process based on the best practices and the organization’s need for customization.

Following are the 5 imperatives to create the best travel management workflow

Design a comprehensive travel request form:

This is the originating step. Here the employee who is traveling for business has to raise a request giving details like date, destination, the purpose of travel.

Create a Travel Approval Matrix:

 After a travel request has been set up, it moves to the Superiors’ (Approving Authority) for approval.  Their role is to verify if the travel is for genuine business purpose and there is no out of policy booking made. Also, there can be various possibilities of approval flow. It can be Multilayer: Employee has to get approval from more than one superiors or Multimode: For a specific mode of transport, the approval authority designates to a particular superior. The CFO should have access to the MIS(daily / weekly) to track delays in approval,  budget vs. actuals and deviations.  System based alerts can save CFO’s precious time. This review opens up the goldmine of savings in the Travel Management head.  

Automate your Travel Approval  Workflow:

Automated workflows can make the entire approval process almost real-time. All can access information along with time and date stamp. It makes the whole process interactive wherein if the superior wants the employee to reschedule his itinerary, and the alert goes to the employee instantly. It also ensures all the steps in the travel management approval process and company policies adhere before the travel proceeds for booking.

Create a multi-device interface for a great traveler experience:

 In today’s fast-paced world, enabling multiple device interfaces like mobile, laptop and tabs go a long way in offering convenience to the traveler and making the process faster.

Must have features in your company’s travel approval system:

  • Self-booking tool
  • Dashboards that provide vital information at one glance
  • Notification for lower fare availability.
  • Email alerts for approvals.
  • Easy-to-use interface
  • One-click statements
  • Multiple language support
  • Policy compliance and non-compliance triggers
  • Reports of missed savings due to delay in approval

By optimizing the travel approval process and placing controls corporates are saving 7% annually on their business travel spend. To more how you can join the league, contact us for a free consultation.

How-to-Reduce-your-company’s-Business-Travel-Spend

How to Reduce your company’s Business Travel Spend?

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We all agree that Business Travel is an investment. The moot question is how to do we reduce the cost and improves efficiency & impact on the business results. Let’s address a few ways to reduce business travel cost.

Balance cost saving & employee friendliness

 Automate your Business Travel Management System and empower the employee to book their travel online. It minimizes confusion, delays and empowers them to choose the travel option that best suits their need. After all, employees are your most significant brand assets. Don’t put them in a less convenient and unfriendly travel experience.  Negotiate hard with your travel partners to get you better deals and value-added offers without adding cost.

Implement Company Travel Policy

You have invested considerable time in deliberating, developing and approving a Business Travel Policy for your company. Now it’s time to implement it. It’s easier said than done. Automating your travel management system drives 100% adherence to travel policy and approval matrix workflow. This one strategic move can bring substantial transparency in your business travel process.

Change of Travel Culture

There can be nothing better than creating a culture of responsible booking within the organization. Imagine your employees being pro-active in making their travel arrangements! However, this can be only possible when you empower your employees to choose their preferences and offer some lucrative giveaways on their smart business travel planning.

Use Insights based on Data

Access to dashboards and customized reports can provide you with a wealth of insights on business travel within your company. You can set alerts whenever there is a deviation.  It can help you plug loopholes and make smart travel policy changes. Well-interpreted travel data saves cost and enhances value.

Design efficient processes

 Being responsible for your employee’s travel arrangements, it is your most significant interest to ensure that the internal & external sub-processes surrounding Business Travel Management run efficiently.  Seeking feedback from employees, HR, Travel desk staff and service providers give you a wealth of data to streamline your processes and remove bottlenecks that hinder faster travel and best deals.

Post-travel, an expense management system integrated with your travel management system keeps confusion at bay and help in quicker settlements of travel expenditures.

Is-your-business-travel-approval-process-still-ancient

Is your business travel approval process still ancient?

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Mr. Stephen says “It takes minimum 8 to 9 hours to receive an approval for my business trip”. Do your employees face the same delay in approval as Stephen? You may have an approval process involving numerous e-mails and discussions over the phone. Well, that sounds ancient as with advancement in travel technology travel approval can be made as quick as in fifteen minutes.

What is pre-trip approval?

Pre-trip approval is the initial step of the travel process where employees raise travel requests to be approved by respective approvers.

The main objective of pre-trip approval is to control undesirable travel buying behaviours of employees and cost. The approver verifies the travel request according to the travel policy of the corporate and decides to approve or decline.

What are the drawbacks of manual approval processes?

The major drawback of the manual approval process is, it includes too many levels of approval that make it tedious and confusing.  Also, multi-level approval is difficult to enforce when the process is manual. These days, travel fares tend to vary with every passing minute. By the time the travel requests reach the approver, he approves and the request is forwarded to travel admin for booking, the fares may reflect a hike.

Moreover, this enables approvers to view the other travel options available in comparison to the one chosen by the employees. According to research delay in travel approval, can lead to 9% excess travel spending.

How automated approval of corporate travel management solution works?

Corporate travel management solution is a web-based software solution that allows employees to raise travel request, get approval, book their travel, make payment and receive insights about their travel spend. It automates the entire travel process making travel easy for corporates to manage and employees to travel.

Let’s look into the approval features of corporate travel management solution. Employees log onto the corporate travel management solution. Employees select the preferred travel dates and modes. The travel request is sent to the approver for approval. The corporate travel management solution available in desktop, mobile and tablet version, has made it possible to approve the travel request from anywhere and anytime. The approver after ensuring the travel requests are as per the company policy and verifying the purpose of travel approves the requests.

How corporate travel management solution makes the approval process easier?

With the ability to approve and decline instantly from an email and application, approvers can quickly take actions. Approvers now can easily take action of multiple travel trips at the same time. Not just that, one can also review the approval history. The entire travel process becomes systematic.

Some major benefits of corporate travel management tools are as follows:

Automation: Its effective automation eliminates time-consuming manual approvals.

Insights: The meaningful reports of the automated travel management solution helps in making decisions and streamlines the auditing process. It helps approvers to review the detailed travel itineraries in a single dashboard.

Effective Change Management: It involves customizable notification that alerts the employees to change policy and encourages the right choice.

Control:  It ensures that the employees are traveling within the budgets. It also monitors the effectiveness of approvers, whether any delay has caused the company to pay more.

So, it’s high time to get rid of the ancient business travel approval process and make the corporate trips hassle-free and easy. Ensure today you are getting the best from your corporate travel program.

How-to-prevent-jet-lag-from-decreasing-your-business-productivity

How to prevent jet lag from decreasing your business productivity?

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Rachael was all prepared, and on that big day just before the ShowTime, she dozed off. What is wrong with her? After all this struggle for a whole year, how can her mind and body were not cooperating with her at this time? – Is your story somewhere similar to this? Don’t worry you are at the right place if jet lag is what cause you all the trouble.

Jet lag is a common phenomenon to the air travelers who need to travel from a time zone to a different time zone. This biological phenomenon cause to happen sleep disorders (You may feel sleepy in the daytime and simultaneously be awake at night). This happens cause our body follows a 24hour clock, which tells us when is the morning or when is the afternoon, depending on our exposure to sunlight. This disruption in 24 hours clock, results in sleep disorder. And before you identify any effect, the lack of full sleep affects your cognitive and innovative skills. Other attributes like a headache, exhaustion, indigestion, and sleepy feelings make your brain dull when you need it the most, and in turn, your efficiency and productivity suffers. As our productivity and performance level minutely relate to our body, we should take proper steps such that any critical business opportunity should not suffer due to jet lag. These are few of the steps which can help you to cope up with the jet lag stress:

Arrive couple of days before your Big day

Don’t arrive just on before your Big day. Instead, you can make your travel couple of days before at least 24 hours before such that, you can get proper rest, which may not eliminate the jet lag but at least help you to keep up your efficiency.

Evolution in yourself: Try to adopt the new time zone beforehand

Before traveling to new time zone, you can try to cope up with it, by living like you have been in the new place. This will sufficiently eliminate your jet lag without any delay after the journey. Like if you will be going to eastward, you should try an early rise and vice versa for a trip to the west side. But you may suffer some inconsistency while trying to cope up due to mismatched lifestyle.

Plan the timings carefully

You can schedule your journey to such hours, which you usually use for sleep (like at night) so that you can use the ideal flight time to sleep. Hence the required time to get back your productivity will be reduced.

Synchronize your asset

Don’t forget to synchronize your watch with the destination time zone while boarding your flight.

Exercise is key to fitness

You can use a little bit of exercise before and after reaching the destination to ensure timely sleep.

It is not the right time to get high

Avoid excessive alcohol or caffeinate product before going to sleep as they may cause you to oversleep or may prevent you from getting a proper sleep.

Daylight is the savior

Daylight helps our body hormones to tackle the jet lag faster and helps to synchronize with the new timetable quickly. So the advice is to expose yourself as much as possible to sunlight.

You may love to eat, but your stomach can agree to disagree

Avoid any heavy meal before, during and just after the journey, to avoid any stomach upset.

Earplugs and eyeshades are your new Best Friend

If you perceive that your sleep during or after the flight at the new environment may hamper due to noise and light, then you should carry earplugs or headphones to eliminate possible noise and sleep mask or eyeshades to block excessive light. At the new place, you may feel more prone to light or sound as your sleep cycle has been disturbed.

These are simple tips to follow. But all those simple things can make or break your day. End of the day what matters is, did you win the deal?