When you think of peak travel season, most people think of summer. August holidays, summer vacations, and warm weather leads to more travel time. Right?
When it comes to traveling for work, the busiest travel season is actually autumn. The September - November months make up almost a third of annual business travel, according to TravelPerk booking data from 2023 - 2025.
With peak travel season comes longer lines, more delays, higher costs, and other tricky situations. The good news is: a little preparation goes a long way.
How to prepare for peak travel season
We tapped into our team of experts to help you pinpoint — and avoid — the biggest challenges that come with peak travel season.
Book early
It’s the basic principle of supply and demand: the more people traveling at a certain time, the more expensive things become. Flights and trains fill up more quickly, accommodation availability decreases, and prices rise quickly.
This is especially true for peak destinations. The more popular the destination, the more expensive peak season travel will cost.
Data taken from business travel booked for June - August 2025 on the TravelPerk platform.
The earlier you can lock in your travel plans for fall, the better chance you have of securing the best prices and options before things start to book up.
For peak travel season, we recommend booking at least 2-3 months in advance when possible. We’re already seeing this kind of proactive planning from many US businesses, according to TravelPerk booking data from 2023 and 2024. That said, it’s a good idea no matter where you live.
Review your current travel policy
When things get busy, travel policy compliance tends to slide by the wayside.
Employees may want to book a flight before it fills up, so they book out-of-policy. The travel manager is off today, so they just book anyway and submit a reimbursement. Or they’ve waited too long and the price is out of budget, but it’s all that’s available, so companies are stuck paying extra.
These are common situations, but they’re not unavoidable. There are two big things you can do now to help avoid these situations this fall:
1. Review your travel policy before the rush.
Does it still meet your needs? Does your team actually know what the policy is? Are there clear and easy ways to access it? If needed, revamp your travel policy to meet current needs (not how things were three years ago), make it easy to find and use, and encourage employees to review it before peak travel season.
2. Bake your policy into the booking process.
While 60% of companies have a corporate travel policy in place, more than 50% of business travelers are free to book using any method they prefer. And half of business travelers willingly admit they don’t always follow the company policy.
The key to compliance: Instead of presenting the policy as a PDF that employees should then follow while booking elsewhere, automate your policy within the booking process. When your travel policy is implemented in your booking system, employees can still easily book their own travel, while clearly seeing which options are “in policy” right in the booking platform.
This way, travelers can make more informed decisions when booking, and if someone does book out of policy, it can get flagged for approval, so there’s no surprises down the line with finances.
Pack light and pack smart
Luggage can cause major mishaps: in 2024, 18% of people traveling for work experienced disruptions due to lost or mishandled luggage.
And when business travelers’ luggage is lost, it often results in further delays, more frustration for travelers, decreased productivity, and more paperwork for your admin as they help hunt down the lost bags.
All of this can be avoided, most simply, by packing lightly. Encourage your travelers to take only carry-on luggage, which can stay with them the entire time. That doesn’t mean they should avoid bringing business travel essentials — but packing smart can help prevent luggage mishaps.
Prepare for last minute changes
Unfortunately, travel disruptions are almost as common as business travel itself, with nearly 80% of business travelers globally saying they experienced travel disruptions in 2024. And during busy travel seasons, delays and disruptions are only more common.
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You can’t avoid disruptions — but you can plan ahead to mitigate their effects:
1. Plan more intentionally
When you anticipate travel disruptions, you can help mitigate most of the impact. For example: booking longer, more intentional trips instead of back-to-back trips with quick turnarounds. Longer trips allow more wiggle room and help avoid the cascading “domino effect” delays and cancellations can cause. If you have important meetings or conferences, travel the night before to give your travelers margin for delays.
2. Make sure there’s always someone on call
When travelers have someone they can contact anytime — rather than just the travel manager at your office who is asleep at midnight when their flight’s been cancelled — they can resolve any issues quickly, easily, and with the best outcomes. For example, TravelPerk offers 24/7 customer service for travelers — and real-time updates on potential impacts or delays for all trips.
3. Prioritize flexible bookings
Whenever possible, flexible fares should be the default in your travel policy, especially for peak-season bookings. Cheaper, less flexible options can be appealing, but they often cause more stress, headaches, and cost in the long run when things go awry. Instead, opt for flexible bookings that give you the most options — without expensive change fees.
Support your finance team, too
Peak travel season can also be stressful for your finance teams.
They get swamped trying to hunt down receipts, reconcile costs, and make accurate reimbursements — especially when teams are using spreadsheets and disconnected tools and booking processes.
In fact, 83% of people who travel for work say they face challenges when it comes to travel expenses.
Automating your expense process by integrating expenses with a travel management solution can be a massive support to your travelers, your finance teams, and your bottom line. In short: get everything in one place. This eliminates paperwork and time-consuming processes for travelers, avoid personal bookings that have to be reimbursed later, and saves time and headaches for your finance team.
Make peak season travel a breeze with TravelPerk
TravelPerk’s all-in-one travel management software makes booking and managing travel for work a breeze any time of year — but you’ll definitely feel the difference during the chaotic peak season. TravelPerk helps your team:
Integrate your travel policy into the booking process to increase policy compliance.
Save up to 80% of your travel admin time by automating and streamlining processes.
Empower employees to self-book while automating approvals — for one team, 89% of trips are now approved automatically.
Get support whenever you need it with 24/7 customer care and a TravelCare dashboard that alerts you to potential disruptions.
Integrate expense management to streamline expenses, VAT recovery, invoicing and more to save your finance team time and headaches.
Save money, even during expensive travel seasons, with flexible fares, budget control, expense management, and policy compliance that help you stay in control.
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