Choosing a Travel Booking System that Works for You

When it comes to booking travel for employees, the size of your company can really shape your approach. But no matter how big or small your team is, having a clear view of travel expenses is critical for tracking spend, keeping costs down, and eliminating administrative headaches.

Changes in Business Travel

Priorities around business travel have shifted in the last several years. With rising costs and tighter budgets, finding the best rates and managing expenses is essential — and offering employees an easy, clear, and centralized travel booking system has become a top focus.

How Are Employees Booking Travel?

Employees are booking business travel outside of company tools more than ever. In our 2024 Spend and Expense Management Report, 64% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) experience “leakage”—the practice of employees booking travel outside of official corporate tools. This figure has risen from 57% last year, underscoring a trend toward decentralized booking. For businesses with increasing travel needs, this shift highlights the importance of centralized solutions to control expenses and streamline travel management.

Why Real-Time Visibility Matters

Mixing booking methods can create headaches. Corporate booking tools can be pricey, and they often don’t give you insight into what employees are booking outside the platform — an issue known as leakage. What’s more, you often don’t get a clear picture of expenses until employees submit their reports, making it difficult to fulfill your duty of care and negotiate better rates with travel vendors.

Modern companies need a platform that brings together expense management and travel booking with real-time insights into all travel spend—whether it’s on or off-platform. Center’s Insights for Travel delivers exactly that, providing comprehensive visibility and control over travel expenses, from managed bookings to those outside traditional tools. Using Center’s corporate card combined with its robust expense management software, employers gain a clear, complete view of spending as it happens.

With Insights for Travel, companies benefit from real-time dashboards that track departmental spend, vendor performance, and policy adherence—all in one place. This unmatched visibility makes it easier to optimize budgets, enforce travel policies, and negotiate vendor discounts. As Bill Lloyd, CFO of Every Nation Churches and Ministries shares, “Center gives me amazing, instant transparency into our spend—by department, by spending area, by expense type. Moving to Center was a big win for us. I’ve actually had people say, ‘This is the best thing you guys have ever done.’”

Improving the Traveler Experience

Today’s employees expect a booking experience that’s as easy to use as consumer travel apps, so look for solutions that make travel booking and expense reporting a breeze. The ideal solution will provide a payment-led, consumer-grade booking experience, and integrate project codes, policy rules, and compliance checks directly into the booking process. It should also offer features like auto-matching receipts to expenses and real-time submission capabilities. These enhancements will save time and reduce stress for employees, and give admins the visibility and control they need to manage travel spend with ease.

Modernize Your Travel Platform

Interested in seeing how real-time reporting and insights can transform your approach to business travel and expense management? Sign up for a personalized demo today and bring your travel tools into the future.