Traveleads: 10 top tips on how to cut travel costs
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YORKSHIRE travel management company Traveleads, which is celebrating 40 years in business, gives TheBusinessDesk.com’s readers its top 10 tips on how to cut travel costs during the current economic downturn. The Leeds-based corporate travel specialists and flight wholesalers says: 1. Ensure you have a clear travel policy, which all of your staff understand, and find easy to follow (Traveleads can help by providing a sample policy as a starter to guide you). 2. Encourage your travellers to plan ahead – at least four weeks in respect of rail journeys and longer, if possible, for flight journeys. The further ahead you plan, the better cost options will be available. 3. Try to ensure that internal meetings between colleagues remain unchanged once bookings have been made – don’t incur cancellation and change penalties unnecessarily. 4. For international flights (other than “low-cost” airlines) make sure you are dealing directly with a travel wholesaler, as they will have access to ‘sale’ air fares which won’t be found on the Internet search engines. 5. For UK rail journeys, make sure that under-25 and over-60 travellers have either a 16 to 25 or Senior railcard, as these attract 34% savings on most rail fares and often can pay for themselves within a couple of longer journeys. Take advantage of transferable Oyster cards for use on the London Underground, providing further savings on tube & bus travel in the capital. Also make sure that you always compare the cost of two single rail tickets against a return ticket – they often work out a lot cheaper – and self-book technology such as Evolvi allows you to make these checks with a single mouse-click. 6. For longer stays away, consider apartments or aparthotels as an alternative to traditional hotels. Not only do they offer more space for your travellers but, by providing catering and lounge facilities – just like a private flat, you can cut down on eating out expenses and give the traveller more space and a ‘home’ base, rather than a cramped hotel room. 7. For London stays, don’t get too fixated on having to stay in the exact centre, but consider options further afield – for example Hampstead, Wimbledon, Kingston, Greenwich, which offer good accommodation choices, often at lower rates, and which have excellent rail, tube/DLR links into the City and West end of London. 8. Make sure that your organisation is enrolled into all of the relevant supplier loyalty schemes so that you accrue points for all the tickets you buy and can then cash in these points for free tickets, upgrades etc. 9. Beware of any agent who sells you tickets but askes the airline to process the credit card transaction (you’ll see the airline names coming up on your card statement); they will more than likely not be using the lowest fares as the airlines refuse to act as the credit card ‘merchant’ when selling their wholesale fares as they don’t want to pay the credit card commission, having already discounted the airfare. If you don’t understand how this works, Traveleads will be happy to give you some clear illustrations. 10. Finally, don’t get hung up on the question of a good travel management company (TMC) charging you a service fee – everyone has to make a living. The TMC fee usually equates to less than 3% of the average trip costs, and a good TMC can source you some significant cost savings. In paying them a fee, they are supporting your business by researching and checking the markets thoroughly, so beware ‘low/no fees’ claims – they are often simply not true or you will get a poor selection of supplier cost options. As with anything in this life, you get what you pay for. :::: Traveleads is offering TheBusinessDesk.com’s registered users a free 30-minute ‘MOT’ on their travel procurement practices. For further information contact Alison Carpenter or Chandra Patel at Traveleads on 0113 2457745.
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