As a travel manager, you likely know how challenging and overwhelming it can be to find the best prices, track travel expenses, and oversee your company’s travel plans.
Without the proper structure, you’ll quickly become overworked and have things start to fall out of place. However, you don’t have to do it all on your own, as travel management companies (TMCs) can help.
These TMCs save you time and effort and ensure policy compliance to make the entire travel process seamless and convenient.
If you’re looking for the best travel management companies for businesses based in Aberdeen, then you’ve come to the right place. To help you, we’ve put together a guide that contains the top features to look out for when choosing a travel management agency and a review of the best four corporate/business travel management companies.
Features to look for when choosing a travel management company
Many travel management companies for businesses in Aberdeen offer travel technology to assist with booking processes or have dedicated agents to help you book your trips.
Keep in mind, however, that a local travel management company with physical offices isn’t necessarily the most suitable option to help manage your company’s business travel needs, because it might simply not have all the features you need to optimize your travel program.
Choosing a travel management company that doesn’t offer all of the features you need leaves you back at square one with all of the same limitations you faced in the past.
Below, we detail the key features you need to look out for when comparing travel management companies that will help you save money, protect your business travellers, and streamline your entire travel management program.
- Extensive travel inventories: It’s essential that the travel management company you choose gives you access to comprehensive inventories of transportation and accommodation, as well as enabling you to compare prices, dates, and offers that best suit your travel needs.
- Built-in approval workflows: Embedding your travel approval workflows and travel policy into your travel management company’s platform helps you increase policy compliance ratesand eliminates the need to manage travel and expenses via long email threads.
- Centralized invoice collection: Some travel management companies don’t act as a single vendor meaning that you’ll still need to collect and collate invoices from various companies. Travel management companies that offer a system that consolidates all of your monthly invoices into one single vendor invoice can save you a lot of time and hassle.
- Flexible booking options: Flexible booking optionsenable businesses to accommodate any last-minute changes to trip dates or cancellations after booking for free or at a reasonable cost.
- 24/7 Customer support: Unexpected events are inevitable in business travel, and you need to know that your travel management company will be there to help you should things go wrong. A prompt, easy-to-access customer support function is essential to help your travellers manage any issues that arise.
- Reporting capabilities: The ability to access travel data that is broken down by individual business travellers, mode of transportation, booking type, and cancellations, helps you carry out significant spend optimization activities.
The 4 best corporate travel management agencies for companies based in Aberdeen
Since you now know what to keep your eyes peeled for when choosing a travel agency or company, let’s examine some of the best travel management companies for businesses based in Aberdeen that have these features.
Here are our top four picks.
1. TravelPerk
TravelPerk
is an all-in-one travel platform that handles everything about your business travel. With TravelPerk, you never have to worry about booking, expensing, risk management, compliance, etc.What is more,
TravelPerk recently acquired
UK business travel specialist Click Travel in 2021. This acquisition has allowed TravelPerk to gain a foothold in the UK and create an unbeatable, one-of-a-kind solution for companies in Aberdeen and other parts of the United Kingdom.Here are some other features that make TravelPerk the ideal travel management solution for your business:
- Flexible booking with FlexiPerk: FlexiPerk allows you to cancel booked trips (up to two hours before departure) and still get 80% of your money back. In addition, there’s no limitation on how many cancellations you can make.
- Safety alerts with TravelCare: TravelPerk’s TravelCare feature is a travel safety solution that offers you essential and up-to-date alerts about what’s happening in your planned destination. This feature provides maximum travel safety and ensures you get the help you need during emergencies.
- Integrated travel policy & approval flows: You can use this feature to set ground rules and guidelines for how your travel group should book and expense their travel. You can update these policies as much as you like and set up different policies for different trips.
- 24/7 fast customer support: TravelPerk has an ever-ready team of travel consultants to offer you and your team members or employees any help you might need on your corporate trip. You can count on TravelPerk’s out-of-hours service from real humans who respond in 15 seconds.
- Easy & real-time expense reports: You can use TravelPerk to generate, access, and export expense reports. These reports are flexible as you can break down its data by person, recoverable VAT, cancellations, and so on. You can also use the reports to track your travel budget.
- Carbon offsetting with GreenPerk: Worried about your carbon footprint after completing a trip? GreenPerk helps you achieve your sustainability goals and offset your carbon footprint by collecting funds (from each trip you make) and investing them in certified sustainable projects.
- Largest inventory worldwide: TravelPerk has the most extensive inventory of transport (car hire, flights, trains) and accommodation (hotels, Airbnbs) options you can choose from — whether in Aberdeen or anywhere else in the world for that matter.
Other excellent features that make TravelPerk stand out are centralized invoicing,
integration with 3rd party software
, events management
, and VAT recovery
.?)
See how TravelPerk makes business travel stress free
2. QA Travel
QA Travel is a travel management company with 25+ years of experience providing corporate travel solutions to organizations from different sectors in the UK.
QA Travel uses smart travel technology and its access to respected travel networks to add value to its customers.
Some of QA Travel’s main features are:
- Traveller tracking that allows you to locate and communicate with other travellers by using email, SMS, or a mobile app.
- Online invoicing system where you can access individual invoices and monitor your team’s travel spend.
- ATRIIS - GTP that serves as a booking tool to help you manage your itineraries and save costs on your travel program.
- QA Travel mobile app for iOS and Android devices. You can use the app to perform online check-in and receive the latest news about any trip changes.
- Travel inventory that includes but is not limited to over 430 airlines and 44 car rental companies.
Although QA Travel has handy features, it still doesn’t offer as much savings on trips when compared to TravelPerk, due to TravelPerk’s wide inventory and negotiated rates with service providers. Also TravelPerk offers more all-around safety pre-, during, and post-travel.
In addition, TravelPerk provides better mobile app functionality as you cannot use QA Travel’s app to book trips.
Finally, QA Travel’s inventory pales compared to TravelPerk’s, with TravelPerk even boosting more negotiated rates with hotel chains.
3. Munro's Travel
Munro’s Travel provides travel management services to companies in the marine and energy sectors. They’ve served these kinds of companies in the travel industry for over 50 years.
Munro’s Travel offers the following features and services to energy and marine companies from Aberdeen:
- Air travel with competitive marketplace fares.
- Accommodation that includes special deals with local hotels in Aberdeen and other parts of the world.
- Expertise in handling travel management for marine and energy companies.
- An in-house team of visa and passport experts that handles applications for foreigners who want to come to the United Kingdom.
- Cost-saving initiatives to help you find opportunities for lower fares.
While Munro’s Travel might be experts in handling travel arrangements in the energy sector, they fall short in several other areas.
For instance, you can’t get refunds on cancelled trips, reclaim VAT on travels, get the latest news about events surrounding your trip, or offset your trip’s carbon emissions — all of which you can do with TravelPerk.
4. Clyde Travel
Clyde Travel is another travel management company that handles corporate travel for companies in the maritime and offshore industries.
With over 30 years of experience under their belt, Clyde Travel is a popular option for corporate businesses out of Aberdeen.
Here are some of the features and services Clyde Travel can offer you:
- Consort ™ — a crew travel technology that allows you to gain visibility and insight to ensure all your crew members are in the right place at the right time.
- A dedicated team of account managers and 24/7 support from a team of expert travel consultants.
- Marine and offshore airfares for your crew members.
Clyde Travel offers various travel management services but could use a better and more user-friendly self-booking tool. Clyde Travel also doesn’t have a VAT recovery feature or a safety solution as up-to-date as TravelCare.
Ready to choose a corporate travel agency for your Aberdeen-based business?
To provide your company with the best business travel experience, you need to look beyond local TMCs, as these might only be able to give you some of what you need.
TravelPerk, on the other hand, is a travel solution that offers flexibility, 24/7 support, cost savings, a ton of travel options, and many more — all in one place. That way, you have all you need before, during, and even after the trip.
Get started with TravelPerk for free today to save time and enjoy the best business travel experience you can get.
?)
?)
?)
?)