The Intersection of Meeting & Travel Management: Perks of an Integrated Travel Agency

In today’s day and age, connectivity is crucial. With many businesses now regularly hosting or sending staff off to global events, the need for integrated Conference and Corporate Travel Management support has become greater than ever.

From cost-saving to risk management, swapping to an Integrated Travel Agency allows many businesses greater control over their staff travel and budgets, and greater peace of mind in the event something goes wrong. Learn more about how integrating these two services into one aligned offering can support a business.

What is an Integrated Travel Agency?

An integrated Travel Agency is a Travel Agency that provides both Conference Management and Corporate Travel Management. Often undertaken by Corporate Travel Agencies such as Pulse Travel, an integrated travel agency will often support businesses in:

• Consolidating and managing their overall travel expenses
• Ensuring full adherence of a business’s Corporate Travel Policy
• Utilising industry relationships to provide competitive pricing
• Ensuring full knowledge of staff travel at all times
• Providing attendee Travel Management for travelling parties during Conferences and Events

For many Medium and Large Businesses, utilising an Integrated Travel Agency allows businesses to consolidate their Conference Management and Corporate Travel Management under one banner, saving time, money and resources. Furthermore, integrating these two offerings ensures fewer parties are managing a company’s travel bookings at any one time, ensuring increased adherence to company Travel Policies and assurance that travellers are accounted for at all times.

Benefits of Integrating Business Travel and Meetings Management

Conference Management and Corporate Travel Management as individual services can often contain significant overlap, and with businesses more budget-conscious than ever, there are several key points to be made in the argument for integration.

1. Cost-Saving

Employing a third party to manage Conference and Corporate Travel is often necessary, but employing specialists to manage each piece of the puzzle comes with a cost. Many Agencies charge regular sign-on and management fees as part of their cost infrastructure to manage these bookings and events, and by combining your Conference and Corporate Travel Management under one roof businesses can minimise their costs while ensuring the same level of service. Some businesses may also offer sign-on discounts or deals for integrating these services under one roof, ensuring further business savings.

2. Risk Management

With any type of travel or event, naturally comes risk. While risk is unavoidable in business, it’s something that businesses want to mitigate as much as possible – and in this instance, the best way to mitigate risk is to minimise parties involved.

Naturally, the more people involved in something at any one time can increase the risk of something going wrong. By employing multiple parties to manage the same service for different situations, businesses run the risk of parties being double-booked, changes being missed, or staff even being left stranded when they’re unsure which party to speak to in the event of an emergency. By integrating these services under one banner companies ensure that all of their bookings and travel are managed by one team at all times, ensuring consistency, clear communication and efficiency in the event that something goes wrong.

3. Policy Compliance

A companies Travel Policy will often outline their preferred suppliers, agreed booking rates, emergency protocol and any other specific rules that staff need to follow when travelling on behalf of a business, and adopting an integrated approach goes a long way to ensuring this Travel Policy is adhered to. Travel Policies are often created and reviewed in partnership with a Corporate Travel Manager regularly, and by combining Conference and Corporate Travel Management under one roof, businesses can ensure that this Policy is followed at all times and have better visuals over staff movements overall.

4. Improved Processes

Clear, written processes go a long way in ensuring businesses run smoothly, and utilising a Travel Agency that provides both Conference and Corporate Travel Management allows businesses to streamline these processes and ensure business activities are as efficient as possible. For example, Pulse Travel has the ability to manage both Conferences and Corporate Travel, ensuring businesses have one distinct Point of Contact for all travel and tourism-related queries and one experienced Travel Agent to liaise with on any bookings, decreasing approval times and increasing overall efficiency.

5. Increased Clarity

Conference and Corporate Travel Management can get complicated, and choosing to integrate the management of these services under one banner can go a long way in increasing clarity and decreasing confusion around processes. From a business perspective, integrating your Conference and Corporate Travel Management provides better tracking in terms of Travel Spend and Policy Compliance, and from a traveller’s perspective provides clarity around who to contact if something goes wrong.

As companies place higher importance on Corporate Travel once more, finding new and more efficient ways to manage travel and events has become crucial. For more information on how Pulse Travel can support your business in Conference and Corporate Travel Management, get in touch via 1300 131 885.