When business travel isn’t guided by a clear policy, employees are left unsure about what’s allowed, how to book, what expenses are covered, and who needs to approve their trips. This uncertainty leads to budget overruns, booking bottlenecks, and unnecessary stress for everyone involved.
This guide will help you end that confusion. We explain what a corporate travel policy is and show you how to create one that clearly outlines every step: what’s covered, how to book, and how to manage approvals. With these practical steps, you can control costs, ensure compliance, and make business travel smoother for your entire team.
When you book your business travel through TravelPerk, your travel policy is seamlessly integrated into our platform. This not only gives your employees better visibility of whats in policy but also helps them make more informed choices when booking their trips. Not to mention, more control and peace of mind for your finance team too!
A travel policy is a set of guidelines that outlines how your employees should manage their business travel. It includes clear instructions on what’s allowed, how to book travel, and how to handle expenses. This ensures fair consistency and better cost control across your company. Outlining corporate travel policies is a co-creation process. Input from stakeholders, department heads, and frequent travelers is often included to ensure the policy meets the needs of the entire organization. A travel policy usually caters to both international and domestic travel, and includes:
corporate travel companyA travel policy isn’t just about the moment of booking and its related expenses. It also controls all your travel-related expenses and arrangements.
Creating a business travel policy ensures that travel arrangements are consistent, cost-effective, and compliant with company standards. It helps manage expenses, reduces risks, and provides clear guidelines for employees, leading to smoother travel experiences and fewer misunderstandings.
Travel policies aren’t just rules, rules, rules. They shouldn’t cause frustration and eye rolls. Rather, travel policies can positively impact both travelers and businesses. They help you
achieve near-full travel policy complianceYour company travel policy will be affected by how your company travels, who is traveling, and why. However, there are some things that need to be in every company’s policy.
First, you must include your approved booking process and tool. Do you want travelers to book with one
business travel platformto consolidate their business travel expenses? Do you want travelers to book for themselves within policy, or do you want them to make a travel request to an office manager who books all trips?
Your policy should also clearly list what purchases can be expensed and what can’t. This helps employees avoid making purchases that won’t be reimbursed or adding unnecessary expenses to their corporate card.
Specify allowable business expenses like meals, entertainment, or event registration fees. And define them from personal expenses—such as laundry or leisure activities—that should not be charged to the company.
Don’t forget to address travel safetyand insurance. Clearly state the protocols for handling emergencies, provide contact information, and outline the travel insurance coverage available for medical issues or disruptions.
Mention your company hotel policy rules and lodging expenses in your corporate travel policy. Every organization has different rules regarding accommodation within their corporate lodging policy, so it’s important to make them clear from the get-go.
In terms of hotel costs, set a maximum hotel star rating or nightly/room rate that employees cannot exceed. It’s also usual for employees to be required to stay in standard hotel rooms, with ‘deluxe’ suites or rooms off limits.
Secondly, be clear about which incidentals can be reimbursed. These can range from room service and dry-cleaning/laundry services to valet parking and the use of hotel amenities (gym, swimming pool, sauna, etc).
Bear in mind that hotel rates are subject to both seasonal fluctuations and locations, so you’ll need to be mindful of any nuances depending on the time of year and employees’ destinations. For these reasons, many organizations prefer to partner with specific suppliers and negotiate travel packages and require their employees to use these suppliers wherever possible.
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You’ll also need to include a section on travel and entertainment best practices. This should include rules and guidelines on what employees can purchase in the name of entertainment while traveling.
Guidelines for travel and entertainment should include: alcohol can and cannot be expensed The travel policy is also a smart place to put your expense reimbursement process . This way, travelers have a reason to check out the policy.You also need to clearly state who the final approver for these expenses is and what the best way to pay for them is (do you offer travel advances? Should travelers use their own debit or credit cards for these payments?).
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how to write a travel policy.Your air travel policy for employees should contain documentation that they can use to check that their bookings are compliant, detailed information on what information is needed to submit travel expense forms, a list of approved in-flight purchases, and, if relevant, a list of your company’s preferred airlines.
Two of the most common queries surrounding air travel policies relate to business class bookings vs. economy bookings and rules about using business frequent flyer miles for personal use. Below, we go through these queries in more detail to help you craft the most helpful and clear air travel policy for employees.
Make sure employees know when they can or cannot book business class. Business class is much more expensive than the economy, but there could be circumstances when it might be allowed.
For example, some companies let employees book a business classif the flight is longer than a specific time frame, usually between six and ten hours. This helps make long trips more comfortable and keeps employees happy—an important
travel management KPI to be mindful of.You might also allow business class if it is cheaper than the economy. Sometimes, after adding costs like baggage fees and meals, business class is a better deal. Also, economy seats might not be available for last-minute travel, so the business class could be the only choice.
If your policy doesn’t allow business class, make this very clear. This way, there’s no confusion or issues with expense claims later.
When employees travel for work, they often earn frequent flyer miles. There’s no universal rule about whether these miles belong to the employee or the company. so it’s important to clarify this in your travel policy.
Some companies allow employees to keep frequent flyer miles since the employee is the one traveling. Others believe that the miles should belong to the company and be used to save money on future business flights. For this reason, it’s important to include a section that covers using business
frequent flyer miles for personal useFor example, you might allow employees to keep the miles but specify that they cannot choose more expensive flights just to earn extra miles. You could also require that employees always book the cheapest available flight, regardless of their frequent flyer status with a particular airline.
Within this section, you should also clarify how employees should record and save the miles they accrue. Using
TravelPerk, employees can easily add and save specific airline loyalty program numbers to each employee traveler account, and we’ll also automatically check which of their travel rewards programs apply when they search for new flights.
It’s not all smooth sailing, or turbulence-free flying when it comes to writing travel policies, here are some common challenges you need to be aware of: