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KAYAK for Business Corporate Travel Policies

Corporate travel can either be a perk or a burden for employees. Companies need to strike a balance between keeping staff happy while looking after travel costs or maintaining a duty of care.

KAYAK for Business is designed to incorporate travel policies which strike a fine balance between both sides, while taking into consideration exceptional circumstances.

Adults

Core to our principle of travel policies is treating employees as adults. They should know the policies without needing to look for a PDF hidden in the wiki, but also should be accountable for booking trips outside of the company’s desired policy.

Accountability

KAYAK for Business allows companies to enter their corporate travel policies, so that users are easily informed of what trips are in or out of policy. When a trip is booked, managers and finance teams will be simply shown whether this was done in or out of policy. It does not prevent booking out of policy, as there are many reasons for people doing exactly that.

Optimization

The company then can analyse this data to identify if this is a personal, institutional, or policy issue. Over time, booking and travelling for work should be a perk and increase employee satisfaction.

Policies as Constructive Guidelines

Travellers

  • Clear visibility on policy status for each trip
  • Still able to book out policy when necessary
  • Status included in expense claims for quicker claims

Travel Managers

  • Analytics into policy compliance
  • Integrated into managerial approval process
  • Prevent unaccounted bookings

Finance Team

  • Focus on expense claims made out of policy
  • Review effects of violations on T&Es
  • Optimise policies around travel spend

Clear Policy Status

Visibility over every flight or hotel option

  • Policy overview on top right of each search
  • Status for each booking option
  • Reason why an option is out of policy

Visibility over every flight or hotel option
Compliance Overview

Compliance Overview

Easily review which bookings were made out of policy

  • Clear documentation of policy breaches for greater accountability
  • Identify underlying issues or patterns behind out of policy bookings
  • Review the financial impact of booking out of policy

Trip Policy Status in Expense Reports

Focus on expenses made out of policy

  • Each expense to include policy status of booking (fully integrated only in Expensify)
  • Offers employee opportunity to enter the reason ahead of submitting a report
  • Can be combined with whether an employee received authorization for the trip

Getting Your Company Travel Policies Set Up

Follow the steps below to see how to set up your company’s travel policies

Step 1: Log-in to KAYAK for Business and go tohttps://business.kayak.com/business/policy

Company Travel Policies Set Up: go to travel policies page

Step 2: [Optional] For companies which has different policies according to the seniority or team an employee is in, scroll to down to “Group Settings” and click “Add new group”

Company Travel Policies Set Up: add a new group

Step 3: [Optional] Should a group be added, an employee cannot be in two groups. In this example an employee cannot be in both the “Sales team” and “VP and above”

Company Travel Policies Set Up: new groups added

Step 4: Scroll down to Flight and Hotel policies, click “Add a flight policy”

Company Travel Policies Set Up: Add a flight policy

Step 5: The first policies should be a “base” policy, upon which you can drill in more detailed policies on top in additional policies. For example, in this example everyone is able to book only economy or premium economy tickets with a maximum price of $2000 for generic flights. Exceptions can then be added to this rule.

Company Travel Policies Set Up: base policy

Step 6: Clicking again on “Add Flight Policy”, you can start to define the particular rules your company has in more granular details or with special exceptions based on duration, group, route, etc. In this example, the “VP & Above” group is permitted to book business class tickets on flights over 6 hours long.

Company Travel Policies Set Up: adding vp business class

Step 7: You are able to set up policies based upon routes. In this example, the sales team frequently flies domestic within the United States, and the team lead has added this policy where employees should book under $500 and within 3 days of departure.

Company Travel Policies Set Up: sales team constraints

Step 8: Adding policies on hotels works on the same format – add an “anywhere” policy, and then drill down into exceptions. In this example, everywhere is $300 per night, New York is $400 per night because it is more expensive, and Switzerland is just capped at 4 starts because it is very expensive

Company Travel Policies Set Up: add hotels