When business travel isn’t guided by a clear policy, employees are left unsure about what’s allowed, how to book, what expenses are covered, and who needs to approve their trips. This uncertainty leads to budget overruns, booking bottlenecks, and unnecessary stress for everyone involved.
This guide will help you end that confusion. We explain what a corporate travel policy is and show you how to create one that clearly outlines every step: what’s covered, how to book, and how to manage approvals. With these practical steps, you can control costs, ensure compliance, and make business travel smoother for your entire team.
What is a travel policy?
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 travelers 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.
Why create a business travel policy?
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 travelers and businesses. They help you achieve near-full travel policy compliance.
Here’s how:
Benefits for travelers (employees)
Flexibility and autonomy to book their own travel within guidelines
Safety first! (travelers’ 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
What should be included in a corporate travel policy?
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 travelers to book with one business travel platform to consolidate their business travel expenses? Do you want travelers to book for themselves within policy, or do you want them to make a travel request to an 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 and insurance. Clearly state the protocols for handling emergencies, provide contact information, and outline the travel insurance coverage available for medical issues or disruptions.
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Lodging policy guidelines
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.
Travel and entertainment policy guidelines
You’ll also need to include a section on travel and entertainment best practices. This should include rules and guidelines on what employees can purchase in the name of entertainment while traveling.
Guidelines for travel and entertainment should include:
Spending limits for meal expenses (either on a per meal or per day basis)
Rules on what is allowed when employees are entertaining clients (meals, alcoholic beverages, etc)
Clear instructions regarding situations where alcohol can and cannot be expensed, and a maximum amount that can be spent on alcohol per head
List of unallowable personal expenses, such as laundry services, mini-bar charges, and personal phone call charges
Instructions on information, original receipts, and other documentation required in order to process reimbursements
The travel policy is also a smart place to put your expense reimbursement process. This way, travelers have a reason to check out the policy.
You also need to clearly state who the final approver for these expenses is and what the best way to pay for them is (do you offer travel advances? Should travelers use their own debit or credit cards for these payments?).
Air travel policy for employees guidelines
Your air travel policy for employees should contain documentation that they can use to check that their bookings are compliant, detailed information on what information is needed to submit travel expense forms, a list of approved in-flight purchases, and, if relevant, a list of your company’s preferred airlines.
Two of the most common queries surrounding air travel policies relate to business class bookings vs. economy bookings and rules about using business frequent flyer miles for personal use. Below, we go through these queries in more detail to help you craft the most helpful and clear air travel policy for employees.
Guidelines for business class bookings
Make sure employees know when they can or cannot book business class. Business class is much more expensive than the economy, but there could be circumstances when it might be allowed.
For example, some companies let employees book a business class if the flight is longer than a specific time frame, usually between six and ten hours. This helps make long trips more comfortable and keeps employees happy—an important travel management KPI to be mindful of.
You might also allow business class if it is cheaper than the economy. Sometimes, after adding costs like baggage fees and meals, business class is a better deal. Also, economy seats might not be available for last-minute travel, so the business class could be the only choice.
If your policy doesn’t allow business class, make this very clear. This way, there’s no confusion or issues with expense claims later.
Guidelines on using business frequent flyer miles for personal use
When employees travel for work, they often earn frequent flyer miles. There’s no universal rule about whether these miles belong to the employee or the company. so it’s important to clarify this in your travel policy.
Some companies allow employees to keep frequent flyer miles since the employee is the one traveling. Others believe that the miles should belong to the company and be used to save money on future business flights. For this reason, it’s important to include a section that covers using business frequent flyer miles for personal use.
For example, you might allow employees to keep the miles but specify that they cannot choose more expensive flights just to earn extra miles. You could also require that employees always book the cheapest available flight, regardless of their frequent flyer status with a particular airline.
Within this section, you should also clarify how employees should record and save the miles they accrue. Using Perk, employees can easily add and save specific airline loyalty program numbers to each employee traveler account, and we’ll also automatically check which of their travel rewards programs apply when they search for new flights.
Common challenges with travel policies
It’s not all smooth sailing, or turbulence-free flying when it comes to writing travel policies, here are some common challenges you need to be aware of:
No one reads them or remembers them
Travel policies are difficult to understand
Travel policies are not enforced using technology
Travel policies come across as overly bureaucratic
How to market your corporate travel policy to internal teams
It’s simple: If you want your employees to adhere to your corporate travel policy, you need to communicate the policy effectively.
Burying your corporate travel policy within another policy document is almost as good as asking for unauthorized trip bookings and incorrect expense report submissions. Getting your employees on board depends on how well you can market and communicate the policy to your business travelers.
Here are a few tips to help you better communicate your corporate travel policies to your employees and ensure higher compliance rates.
Make sure that your corporate travel policy is visible and accessible
The first step is ensuring employees can readily access the document via your HR or employee portal.
The second step is ensuring the policy is concise and easy to read. Avoid using too much jargon or legalese, and clearly explain the travel guidelines. You might consider dividing the policy into separate sections according to employees’ roles.
Lastly, consider creating a checklist that employees can use to tick off each booking or expense submission step as they go.
How to improve travel policy compliance with Perk
When you book your business travel through Perk, your travel policy is seamlessly integrated into our platform. This not only gives your employees better visibility of what’s in policy but also helps them make more informed choices when booking their trips. Not to mention, your finance team needs more control and peace of mind, too!
Create a comprehensive travel policy FAQ section
Even the most concise, well-written travel policies won’t cover every eventuality or question an employee might have. Plus, if you make changes to your travel policy, these too will need to be reflected.
If you’re finding yourself answering the same set of questions over and over again, or you’ve been asked a question that you think others may have too, start creating a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section so travelers can readily access solutions.
Encourage employee feedback
The most common reason for employees failing to adhere to your policy guidelines is that they don’t enjoy the process, or the process is too clunky. Your traveler experience should be your top priority if you want employees to travel again for the business.
Soliciting feedback on booking and expense processes not only lets your employees know that you care about their experiences, but you can also incorporate the most useful suggestions into your policy.
Travel Policy Problems By the Numbers
64% of millennials understand their company’s travel policy but still book outside of it.
72% of businesses haven’t met their desired level of travel policy compliance.
50% or more of hotel bookings are outside of corporate policy.
Some of these issues can be solved simply by having a policy that more accurately reflects the needs of the business and the travelers. For example, if half of the trips aren’t compliant, the problem could be that your standard trip budget doesn’t reflect current travel prices or demands.
The nature of your business might require lots of last-minute trip bookings, even though these are against the policy.
In addition to a realistic policy, the best thing that a business can do is to have a policy that is actionable and implementable using technology. A wiki or word doc or PDF just isn’t going to cut it.
You need a policy that lives inside of your booking technology.
How to bake your travel policy into the booking process
Because a document can’t affect what people buy, you need business travel booking technology. Use a booking tool that includes customizable travel policies and approval workflows. This way, if a trip is under policy, the traveler or admin can book it. If not, a notification gets sent to the appropriate manager or to finance (based on your prior approval settings for that traveler or department).
3 Things to consider when creating a business travel policy for startups
Business travel policies for startups shouldn’t be vastly different from travel policies for companies that are long in the tooth. Even though you’re just getting started, you’ll need to make sure that your travel policy incorporates everything a more established company would.
However, as a young startup crafting a new and unique business travel policy, there are also a few other factors that you’ll need to consider.
1. “Bleisure” travel
Since it’s highly likely that a large proportion of your workforce will be millennials, you’ll need to consider the fact that they typically approach traveling for work differently from other generations.
In fact, “bleisure” (a portmanteau of "business" and "leisure") travel, a practice whereby employees take advantage of business travel and extend their stay in a location, is an increasingly popular trend among millennials. In fact, over 60% of business trips are now extended for leisure, while many startup companies offer bleisure travel as both an employee attraction and retention tool.
Bleisure is a more recent trend, and might not be reflected in the travel policies of more established companies. If you’d like to make bleisure a perk for your employees, make sure you outline clear bleisure guidelines within your travel policy.
2. Younger employees may prefer to self-book travel
Millenials are the first generation for which self-booking travel on their mobile device is the norm. While older generations relied on travel agents to book flights, accommodation, and car rentals, millennials are more than comfortable with using online booking platforms and price comparison tools for all of their travel needs.
Therefore, they’re much more likely to prefer to book their own travel arrangements — especially when they’re taking advantage of bleisure options. They’re also much more likely to prefer unique accommodation options than your average corporate hotel packages.
Making room for this kind of freedom in your startup business travel policy is not only attractive to potential and existing employees, it can often be a more affordable option.
Alternative lodging options
The younger workforce sees business travel as an opportunity to explore new places they might not otherwise visit, and this includes the places they stay.
Although you’ll have to assess costs and travel safety (always conduct a travel risk assessment!), it could be a good idea to offer alternative accommodation options such as Airbnb to give your employees the opportunity to make the most of their leisure time.
Best practices when writing a corporate travel policy
After a decade of helping hundreds of organizations, large and small, book, plan, and manage business trips and business travel policies, we’ve learned a thing or two about corporate travel best practices.
Regardless of the budgets or rules you choose, here are the most important travel policy best practices that all businesses should follow.
1. Book all your travel in one place, whenever possible
One of the most important things your travel policy can do is to instruct everyone in your company to book in one place.
Why? So that you can consolidate all your itineraries, invoices, and paperwork of your business travel program and everything associated with it into one program or software. Consider all of these key benefits of booking travel in one place:
Track all company travel spend moment-to-moment to streamline expense reporting and make better budgetary decisions.
Tag travel spend by team, department, or project to create more valuable travel reports.
Consolidate travel spend into one monthly invoice.
Remove the need for expense reimbursement (by using an approved business travel tool so the company can pay for travel directly).
Set up clear guidelines for travel costs, reimbursement processes, booking procedures, and more.
Easily track travelers whereabouts, and who’s coming and going at different offices.
Get peace of mind knowing now if you have travelers in affected areas during a natural disaster or other emergencies.
Build and enforce travel policies right where travelers book.
In our following corporate travel policy best practices, we’ll review some of the above benefits. Just know that it’s really hard to follow these best practices if your company is still using a dozen websites to book travel.
Without platform consolidation, it’s hard to get a handle on travel both before it’s booked (approval) and after (tracking and reporting). If you’re not already using a consolidated travel platform, check out our list of the best travel management software to see which one is right for your needs.
2. Use your travel policy to point people to the right resources
An effective corporate travel policy is more than a list of rules or a set of guidelines — it’s a resource sheet for employee needs and employee safety during their travel experience. While you might include a list of rules in your policy, a list of rules alone isn’t very effective. (We’ll explore how to fix this with best practice #3.)
When you treat your policy as a resource sheet, travelers know where to find what they need. The info they seek is right alongside the rules — making it easier for them to both find what they need and follow the rules you’ve outlined.
Here are some pieces of information and resources that travelers might need to pull up easily that you should definitely be including in your corporate travel policy:
Your approved business travel booking platform
How to get real-time travel support
Recommended travel insurance coverage
What to do in the event of an emergency
Duty of care provider (if any) for domestic and international travel
What expenditures are and aren’t employees able to expense
The reimbursement procedure for business travel expenses
Daily allowances or per diems available for travel-related expenses
Any travel guidelines that directly affect the booking process should be in an automated travel policy. You can put them in your travel policy document if you like, but it’s more important that they are included in the automated policies in your business travel booking platform.
This way, employees don’t have to directly think about them — they’re automatically adhered to during the booking process.
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3. Automate your travel policies
So, you’ve provided your employees with resources and policies — but how do you make sure they actually get followed? By automating your company travel policy within your travel booking platform (see step #1).
50% of travelers admit that they don’t always follow company travel policy, and 60% say that they don’t even understand the purpose and benefits of having a company travel policy. If including a list of rules in your policy isn’t that helpful, what should you do instead?
To follow this best practice, don’t go against human nature. Adding more rules and tightening control over your travelers isn’t going to work. Assuming that travelers will carefully consult and adhere to lists of rules and regulations that don’t even seem to benefit them is a flawed assumption (as the numbers support).
Instead, your travel policy needs to affect the booking process. It should be baked into your business travel platform so that if travelers try to book something out of policy, they’re not allowed to without approval from their manager. The manager then gets a notification from the travel app, and can approve or deny the trip. The manager can then complete the booking, or just give their approval so that the traveler can finish the booking.
This way, your travel policy gets followed on every booking, without any extra thought or work from your employees. It reduces the burden of adhering to the rules on individuals and makes it effortless.
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4. Use a booking tool travelers love
Automated travel policies are really great. They affect travel around the clock so you don’t have to nag everyone to stop overspending. But, there’s a flaw with these too. If travelers don’t enjoy using the approved business travel platform or if they don’t feel like it has good deals on travel, then they won’t use it.
35% of the time when travelers book outside of the company-approved tool, it’s because they’re trying to find cost-savings via another platform.
That’s why it’s essential to choose a platform that not only offers great inventory and prices, but that has a UX and customer experience that your travelers enjoy. A good travel management platform aligns with your business purposes, travel needs, and company culture; allows you to automate your expense policy, travel policy, and other travel workflows; and supports employee satisfaction.
Whenever you make changes to the tech your company books with, do a pilot. Roll it out to 5% or 10% of your travelers to begin with and get their feedback. If travelers don’t love the business travel management solution you choose, then you can’t easily control travel spend with automated travel policies. They’ll just book elsewhere.
Not sure where to start? Check out our list of the most cost-effective travel management tools travelers love. Or, check out Perk — with 7-star customer service and 4.7 stars on Capterra, it’s an easy choice for an all-in-one platform that your employees will love.
5. Enable self-booking or trip saving
The final best practice is a win-win. Setting up self-booking is good for everyone.
Travelers: can book what they want, faster, and all by themselves— while staying within policy.
Administrators: don’t have to handle everyone’s travel booking requests, and can instead point employees to use the business travel platform and offer help as needed.
Finance teams: don’t have to manage reimbursements or an array of travel invoices — pay directly from company accounts within the booking platform and streamline expense management.
When you set up your travel policies inside your business travel booking platform, self-booking is a no brainer. You just add travelers to your account and you’re off. A good platform will allow travelers to self-book all travel arrangements: from airfare to ground transportation or a rental car to accommodation and more, while staying within your company’s pre-determined travel budget.
See how GetYour Guide optimized their travel booking processes with Perk, allowing them to consolidate travel planning via self-booking for 17 offices — spending less time on travel booking and more time on core projects and business growth.
If self-booking isn’t a fit for your company, we won’t judge. Some organizations need more control over employee travel. However, you can still allow travelers to easily pick the exact layover, itinerary, and accommodation that they want before having a travel manager involved for the approval process.
Set up your booking platform to have employees request approval for every trip, regardless of policy. This allows travelers to save their in-progress trips. Then an admin can finish the booking, using their saved options.
Making travel policy adherence easier with Perk
As you can see, corporate travel best practices prioritize policies that are great for the traveler, not just the company. When you put the business traveler front and center, managing a travel program gets easier.
With Perk, managing corporate travel, and your travelers, and your travel policy is easier than ever. With everything consolidated into one easy-to-use tool your whole team will love, plus automated travel policies that make sure your employees follow your booking and spending guidelines every time, Perk streamlines and simplifies your corporate travel program.
Perfect your travel policy with Perk
Now we have established what a travel policy is and why it’s important, have a look at the other aspects of this guide. This online resource will provide help on the following areas of a corporate travel policy:
When creating a business travel policy, remember to keep your business objectives in mind. Make sure that, as well as considering your employees’ job satisfaction, you’re also making promises that you can keep and that align with your business goals.
If you want to make sure that your business travel policy covers everything you need, check out our travel policy template to get you started.
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