Boosting ROI on Business Travel: Analyzing Data and Insights from ITILITE Reports

Business travel ROI, or Return on Investment, refers to the financial and non-financial benefits gained by a company as a result of its investment in business travel activities. It’s a measure of how effectively a company’s spending on business travel contributes to its overall goals and objectives. 

Travel data allows for a clear measurement of ROI by comparing the costs incurred during the trip to the outcomes achieved. This could involve assessing increased sales, new business partnerships, or other tangible benefits resulting from the trip. 

Tracking and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) through various travel reports can significantly improve travel ROI. These reports provide insights into travel expenses, patterns, and outcomes. 

Here are 17 essential travel reports that can help you enhance your business travel ROI:

1. Total Travel Spend: This report provides insights into overall travel expenditure. It includes flights, stays, transportation, meals, and other expenses. 
2. Cost per Trip: This report provides insights into the average cost incurred per business trip. It helps in identifying opportunities for cost reduction.
3. Accommodation:  This report provides insights into accommodation expenses by destination, category (e.g., budget, mid-range, luxury), and traveler. 
4. Airfare Report:  This report provides insights into airfare costs based on routes, airlines, booking class, and advance purchase.
5. Ground Transportation:  This report provides insights into spending on ground transportation, including taxis, car rentals, and rideshare services. 
6. Meal and Entertainment:  This report provides insights into spending on meals, client entertainment, and incidental expenses. 
7. Budget Vs. Actual Expense Report: This report helps you see how much money you actually spent on your business trip compared to what you had planned in the beginning
8. Last-Minute Bookings Report: This report provides you insights into the percentage or number of last-minute bookings made. You can then look into the root cause to identify traveler behavior.
9. Cancellations and Reschedules Report: The report highlights the frequencies of trip cancellations and reschedules. By analyzing these trips, the report identifies common triggers for changes in travel dates, such as project delays, client meetings, or external events.
10. Traveler Productivity and Business Outcomes:  This report provides insights into the impact of travel on business outcomes. It may include the number of sales generated, deals closed, or projects completed. Linking travel to results provides a holistic view of ROI.
11. Travel Booking Lead Time:  This report provides insights into how far in advance trips are booked. 
12. Traveler Compliance Report:  This report provides insights into how well employees adhere to travel policies. Low compliance rates may indicate the need for better policy enforcement.
13. Average Trip Duration:  This report provides insights into the average length of business trips. This KPI helps optimize travel planning and assess if longer trips yield better results.
14. Traveler Satisfaction:  This report provides insights into feedback from travelers about their travel experiences. High traveler satisfaction often translates into better productivity and ROI.
15. Unused Tickets and Credits:  This report provides insights into unused airline tickets, hotel reservations, and other credits. These represent potential savings if effectively managed.
16. Travel Cost Savings:  This report provides insights into the savings achieved through negotiated rates, early bookings, and cost-conscious traveler behavior.
17. ROI Calculation:  This report provides insights into business travel ROI by comparing expenses against tangible outcomes, such as increased revenue or cost savings.

How You Can Leverage This Data To Optimize Business Travel ROI

Perform Expense Analysis

Expense analysis using travel data involves carefully examining the purchases made by business travelers. Through careful analysis, specific areas where cost-saving opportunities exist can be pinpointed. This could include strategies like booking flights and accommodations well in advance, choosing cost-effective transportation options, etc.

Companies can also compare their travel expenses against industry benchmarks to determine whether their spending is within reasonable limits or if there’s room for improvement.

Improve Booking Strategies

Booking strategies play a crucial role in optimizing business travel ROI and securing the best possible deals and rates. Reports can analyze booking data to identify the optimal time frame for making reservations. Reports may highlight the day of the week on which tickets cost less. Usually, booking well in advance can lead to lower costs.

Further, data analysis can reveal off-peak periods when travel demand is lower. Traveling during these times can result in reduced costs for flights, accommodations, and other travel-related expenses. 

Analyze and Help Improve Employee Productivity

Employee productivity is an important component in improving business travel ROI. Long and convoluted travel routes can lead to tiredness and increased stress for employees. By choosing efficient routes, businesses can help employees arrive at their destinations feeling refreshed and less fatigued.

Employees who undergo less time-consuming travel are better equipped to focus on their business tasks upon arrival. They can immediately engage in meetings, presentations, and other important activities without being hampered by travel-related fatigue. Their increased alertness and focus can lead to more productive and fruitful interactions. 

Conduct Performance Evaluation

Every business trip has specific goals, like meeting with clients, attending conferences, training, or working on projects. Companies can compare these goals with travel data to see how well they were met. 

Using travel data helps create important benchmarks, known as KPIs, to measure performance. These benchmarks could show things like how much money was made from new leads gained during the trip, contracts signed, or better relationships with customers. 

Optimize Travel Policies

Policy optimization means regularly checking and improving a company’s travel guidelines. This helps make sure travel is not too expensive but still works well for employees. It’s like finding a balance. This way, the policies stay in line with what the company wants to achieve, industry trends, and what employees like.

Gathering feedback from employees who frequently travel provides valuable insights into pain points, challenges, and areas where the policy can be enhanced to better meet their needs. 

Further, the policy could be improved to emphasize choosing preferred suppliers. These suppliers give better prices, extra services, or loyalty rewards. This helps save money for the company and improve business travel ROI.

Assess the Opportunity for Virtual Meetings

By studying travel data, companies can uncover recurring patterns where particular kinds of business trips consistently yield lower business travel ROI. These patterns might revolve around particular places, types of meetings, or other influencing factors. 

This understanding equips you to decide whether to choose face-to-face gatherings or virtual alternatives. Embracing virtual meetings and video conferences, whenever feasible, offers a strategic tactic for reducing travel costs while maintaining effective collaboration. 

Leverage Data to Improve Business Travel ROI

ITILITE is a robust business travel management software that leverages data-driven insights to enhance your business travel ROI. What sets ITILITE apart is the introduction of an industry-first virtual travel consultant. This unique feature offers meticulous, step-by-step guidance, directing you toward strategic changes essential for optimizing your travel ROI.

Furthermore, ITILITE extends its value by efficiently managing unused flight tickets, a factor that can notably influence your overall travel ROI.

This software also introduces the cutting-edge flight ticket re-shopping feature, which automatically rebooks flight tickets in the event of a price drop post-purchase. This proactive approach ensures that you secure the most advantageous fares, amplifying your travel ROI even further.

To know more about the benefits ITILITE offers, book a demo now.