A travel policy is a set of guidelines that outlines how your employees should manage their business travel. It includes clear instructions on what’s allowed, how to book travel, and how to handle expenses. This ensures fair consistency and better cost control across your company. Outlining corporate travel policies is a co-creation process.  Input from stakeholders, department heads, and frequent travellers is often included to ensure the policy meets the needs of the entire organization. A travel policy usually caters to both international and domestic travel, and includes:

• Booking procedure and approved corporate travel company for travel services
• Allowable cost of booking (hotels, airfare, ground transportation)
• Special exceptions or rules for more expensive cities or routes
• Approval process for trips that exceed typical limitations
• Permitted and not permitted expenses
• Duty of care vendor or procedures
• Preferred company vendors
• Reimbursement process
• Travel debriefing process
• Travel insurance carrier

A travel policy isn’t just about the moment of booking and its related expenses. It also controls all your travel-related expenses and arrangements.

Creating a business travel policy ensures that travel arrangements are consistent, cost-effective, and compliant with company standards. It helps manage expenses, reduces risks, and provides clear guidelines for employees, leading to smoother
travel experiences and fewer misunderstandings.

Travel policies aren’t just rules, rules, rules. They shouldn’t cause frustration and eye rolls. Rather, travel policies can positively impact both travellers and businesses. They help you achieve near-full travel policy compliance. Here’s how:

Benefits for Corporate Travellers (employees)

• Flexibility and autonomy to book their own travel within guidelines
• Safety first! (travellers’ whereabouts are tracked)
• Reduce confusion and hassle with travel booking

Benefits for the company

• Reduce spikes in travel spend and gain control
• Increase fairness and foster a positive company culture
• Reduce friction and frustration over expenses and reimbursements
• Reduce total costs on business travel and optimize your company’s budget

Your company travel policy will be affected by how your company travels, who is traveling, and why. However, there are some things that need to be in every company’s policy.

First, you must include your approved booking process and tool. Do you want travellers to book with one business travel platform to consolidate their business travel expenses? Do you want travellers to book for themselves within policy, or do you want them to make a travel request to an Account/Office manager who books all trips?

Your policy should also clearly list what purchases can be expensed and what can’t. This helps employees avoid making purchases that won’t be reimbursed or adding unnecessary expenses to their corporate card. 

Specify allowable business expenses like meals, entertainment, or event registration fees. And define them from personal expenses—such as laundry or leisure activities—that should not be charged to the company.

Don’t forget to address travel safety. Clearly state the protocols for handling emergencies, provide contact information, and outline the travel insurance coverage available for medical issues or disruptions.

Mention your company hotel policy rules and lodging expenses in your corporate travel policy. Every organization has different rules regarding accommodation within their corporate lodging policy, so it’s important to make them clear from the get-go.
In terms of hotel costs, set a maximum hotel star rating or nightly/room rate that employees cannot exceed. It’s also usual for employees to be required to stay in standard hotel rooms, with ‘deluxe’ suites or rooms off limits.

Secondly, be clear about which incidentals can be reimbursed. These can range from room service and dry-cleaning/laundry services to valet parking and the use of hotel amenities (gym, swimming pool, sauna, etc).

Bear in mind that hotel rates are subject to both seasonal fluctuations and locations, so you’ll need to be mindful of any nuances depending on the time of year and employees’ destinations. For these reasons, many organizations prefer to partner with specific suppliers and negotiate travel packages and require their employees to use these suppliers wherever possible.