Travel 101: Tackle Disruptions with Smarter Booking
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Business travel fosters client relationships, drives growth, and enables effective corporate communication. In busy global hubs like London or weather-affected regions such as Australia, disruptions such as airline cancellations, train delays, or overbooked services can wreak havoc on even the most carefully planned travel itineraries. These challenges often leave business travellers and finance teams scrambling to manage unexpected costs and operational fallout.
From rebooking flights to covering extra accommodation and managing transportation, these unforeseen expenses can quickly strain budgets. Beyond the financial implications, disruptions can also lead to employee frustration, reduced productivity, and lower morale. Travel consultants or experts can provide valuable guidance in managing these scenarios effectively.
In recent years, the travel industry has seen a surge in demand for solutions that cater to evolving business needs, particularly post-pandemic. Addressing these issues requires businesses to adopt robust travel policies and leverage modern tools to mitigate risks effectively. Leveraging company credit cards or virtual cards ensures employees can handle travel costs seamlessly, while integrated tools simplify tracking and reimbursement.
Let’s examine modern tools and explore practical strategies to tackle all these challenges, focusing on smarter booking practices and flexible travel solutions. With the right approach, organisations and finance teams can easily streamline their approach to disruptions in travel management, minimise costs, and ensure smoother, stress-free travel experiences for employees.
Setting up a robust business travel guideline for employees
A well-structured business travel policy is essential for helping employees manage disruptions like flight cancellations or train delays. Without clear guidelines, confusion and overspending are inevitable. Centralising bookings through platforms like TravelPerk ensures employees can rebook last-minute while complying with company policies. Additionally, integrating tools and automation-driven platforms simplifies real-time expense tracking, flagging out-of-policy spending and promoting budget adherence.
Setting specific expense policies for accommodation, meals, transport and car rentals reduces unexpected costs and supports effective risk management. Flexible booking options, such as refundable or changeable tickets for flights and hotels, are priceless.
Transport disruptions can also be mitigated with proactive measures. Centralised platforms like TravelPerk automate updates and cancellations, while integrated solutions like Yokoy capture booking data in real-time, streamlining rebooking processes. Ensuring employees know compensation rights in regions like the UK and Europe—such as EU261 for airline cancellations — further minimises disruption impact.
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Using flexible booking options to avoid double costs
Prioritising refundable or flexible bookings is key to managing travel disruptions effectively. Unexpected delays, cancellations, or schedule changes are common, and non-refundable bookings can result in significant losses when rebooking is required. Flexible travel options allow employees to adjust plans without incurring penalties, protecting budgets from unexpected expenses.
Platforms like TravelPerk make it simple to access flexible fares, allowing businesses to recover costs from last-minute cancellations. This proactive approach reduces financial risks and enhances employee confidence, ensuring a smoother travel experience.
Cancelling bookings and getting a refund with TravelPerk’s FlexiPerk
As we have seen, travel disruptions are inevitable, but TravelPerk’s FlexiPerk feature makes cancellations less daunting. With this digital travel agent, companies can get up to 80% refunds for cancelled bookings, so even last-minute changes, including flights, trains, and hotels, become manageable. This significantly reduces financial risks, ensuring businesses adapt to evolving travel plans without derailing budgets.
How Yokoy integrates with TravelPerk
Additionally, Yokoy’s integration with TravelPerk streamlines travel expense management even more: Automated processes track all bookings, cancellations, and rebookings, and expense data is updated in real-time. This seamless integration eliminates manual tracking errors and offers finance teams a comprehensive view of travel costs. FlexiPerk cancellations are automatically reflected in Yokoy’s reports, saving time and improving accuracy.
Managing transport disruptions effectively
Transport disruptions, such as airline cancellations or train delays, can significantly affect business travel. The right strategies, including risk management measures, help companies mitigate both financial and operational impacts, ensuring employees experience smoother and more stress-free travel.
How to handle airline cancellations
When flights are cancelled, quick action is essential. Contacting airlines or travel providers immediately can secure rebooking options. Employees should have the incentive to explore alternative routes or partner airlines to avoid unnecessary delays.
Awareness of passenger rights is critical. For example, in the UK and Europe, regulations like EU261 entitle passengers to compensation for airline cancellations, particularly when disruptions occur close to departure and no alternatives are provided. Employees should retain receipts, booking confirmations and related documentation to support compensation claims, helping to minimise financial losses.
Incorporating travel insurance into business travel guidelines further protects against unexpected costs. Comprehensive policies can cover delays, cancellations, and last-minute changes, offering employees financial relief and peace of mind. Additionally, sustainable travel initiatives, like choosing airlines with flexible cancellation policies, can align with broader corporate climate change goals while ensuring business continuity.
How to handle train delays
Train delays — caused by weather, technical issues, or staffing shortages — can disrupt schedules, lead to tight connections, or even result in missed meetings. Flexible tickets allow employees to make adjustments without incurring extra costs. Selecting operators with generous delay compensation policies can also significantly reduce the financial impact of disruptions.
It’s essential to encourage employees to make alternative arrangements quickly when delays occur, whether by switching to buses, car rentals, or alternative train services. Centralised platforms enable seamless rebooking, while integrated systems automatically reflect these changes in expense records. This not only simplifies expense tracking but also ensures up-to-date financial reporting.
Many train operators in the UK and Europe offer compensation for delays exceeding certain thresholds, making it essential for employees to understand their eligibility and claim process. Real-time notifications from systems like TravelPerk ensure employees stay informed about schedule changes, enabling timely adjustments to travel plans.
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Leveraging Technology to Simplify Disruption Management
Effectively managing travel disruptions requires leveraging the right technology to automate processes, centralise bookings and provide real-time updates. These tools simplify risk management, help businesses adapt to evolving travel needs and ensure smoother, more sustainable travel experiences.
Automating tracking and reconciliation of travel expenses
One of the key benefits of using technology in travel management is automating the tracking and reconciliation of expenses. Modern tools help businesses to automatically capture travel-related expenses, including rebooked flights, adjusted itineraries, or additional transport costs due to last-minute changes. By integrating platforms like TravelPerk, all data — from cancellations to rebookings — is recorded in real time, ensuring accuracy and transparency.
This automation saves employees and finance teams valuable time while reducing the risk of errors caused by manually handling booking travel. Accurate expense tracking across the globe also allows businesses to analyse trends and implement targeted mitigation strategies. For example, real-time insights can highlight recurring disruption patterns, such as airline cancellations or delays, enabling proactive solutions like booking with more reliable travel companies.
By automating these processes, companies improve compliance, minimise overspending, and control travel budgets. Furthermore, automation aligns with sustainability goals by optimising travel plans, reducing unnecessary emissions from last-minute changes, and encouraging more efficient decision-making.
Centralising bookings with TravelPerk and Yokoy
Centralising all travel bookings through platforms like TravelPerk and integrating them with Yokoy creates a streamlined process for managing trips and disruptions. Employees can book flights, hotels, and car rentals through a unified platform, ensuring all bookings adhere to company policies while finance teams are up to date. This centralisation also allows businesses to monitor travel plans, control expenses, and make necessary adjustments efficiently.
Real-time updates on cancellations, delays, or schedule changes are among the key benefits of centralised bookings. TravelPerk provides instant notifications about disruptions, enabling employees to rebook quickly without unnecessary delays. Integrated platforms like Yokoy automatically reflect changes in expense records, ensuring accurate financial reporting and reducing the administrative burden of manual reconciliation.
Centralised systems also enable more transparent tracking of emissions related to travel for businesses prioritising sustainability and climate change initiatives. By analysing travel data, companies can set achievable sustainability goals while continuing to meet their operational needs.
Automated notifications and real-time updates
Business travel is fast and constantly evolving. Staying informed is essential — especially during disruptions. Automated notifications are vital in keeping employees and finance teams aligned throughout the process. With integrated systems like TravelPerk and Yokoy, employees receive real-time updates on changes to their travel itineraries, such as flight cancellations, delays, or new bookings.
For finance teams, automated notifications about changes to bookings and expenses help ensure they stay on top of evolving costs. Rebookings, cancellations, or additional expenses can be monitored, enabling finance teams to proactively adjust budgets and expense reports. This visibility allows for smarter financial planning and more efficient responses to disruptions.
Real-time updates are particularly valuable when dealing with travel insurance claims or compensation processes. Systems that help immediate notification employees stay informed about eligibility for reimbursement due to delays or cancellations, such as EU261 for flights or compensation schemes for UK train delays, are also valuable. By leveraging these tools, businesses can minimise disruptions’ operational and financial impact, ensuring travel remains as stress-free and productive as possible.
Next steps
Ready to take control of your business travel and minimise disruptions? See how smarter booking strategies and the right tools can streamline your travel management, reduce costs, and keep your team on track. Book a demo today!
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