For many business travellers, organising a trip might start with some research on flights and hotels, and finish with a booking for both. When required, flights and accommodation are essential components of your travellers' business trips, but what about their travel once they touch down? And what about trips that don’t involve a flight? More business travel happens on the ground than in the air, but are travellers and travel managers giving ground transport enough thought?

A travel management company, like Egencia, can help your business manage every aspect of its travel programme. Our global platform makes booking and amending flights and hotels simple. And, it does the same with ground transport. With a dedicated booking tool within the platform and a guaranteed 5% off all published rates on Egencia preferred suppliers globally, we have made car hire more straightforward and cost-effective for businesses.

Putting your company’s travellers in the driving seat

Our single, comprehensive platform allows travellers to book flights, accommodation and car hire all in one place. And what’s more, they can book and manage their business travel through a desktop, tablet or via the Egencia app from wherever they are – they can even start booking on one device and complete their transaction on another.

When choosing how best to travel on the ground, travellers can use the platform to help them make informed decisions. If cost is a consideration, whether as part of their company’s overall cost-conscious culture or, more explicitly, as part of the company’s travel policy, the Egencia platform helps travellers ensure that they have the information needed to make wise choices. Travellers can compare offers from different suppliers, including negotiated rates, through a user-friendly display that includes information on factors such as price and additional charges.

Your travellers also have access to amenities like snow tyres and GPS navigation systems to help support smooth travel. And the convenience of a Delivery and Collect feature, which allows them to pick up and drop off at different desired locations.

Travellers can also make changes to their car rental after booking. Using our platform, they can amend and reschedule with just a few clicks. This function helps travellers to stay in control of their travel, and also gives travel managers the peace of mind that their travellers are supported at home and on the road.

Steering your business travel the right way

Consider the person in charge of procurement and purchasing at your company. How do they approach their decision-making? No doubt, they are greatly influenced by price and efficiency when assessing every purchase they oversee.

So, what if your company’s procurement specialist helped evaluate your travel programme, what would they find? Potentially they may discover a lack of consistency between the way air travel, accommodation and ground transport, like car rental, are booked and managed in your current programme, with some areas running more effectively than others.

A travel management company, like Egencia, can provide your company with all the options they need in one place. Now, your procurement specialist is happy as they don’t need to look for multiple solutions to support their colleagues to travel for business. And you, as a travel manager, can keep things simple and efficient for you—and your travellers.

Driving change for business travel managers

With the Egencia car rental solution, you can empower your employees to take control of their journeys over land, while you learn from the way they travel, through your data. Our platform lets you keep track of your travel spend through the innovative, easy-to-use Egencia Analytics Studio. There you can use data to help you forecast travel spend, plan your travel budget and identify saving opportunities.

As a global travel management company, Egencia has a worldwide reach when it comes to travel options, customer support and access. However, we also work hard to stay locally relevant, and we have strong supply ties present in a vast number of locations to help us provide the best value car rental service.

Travel managers with Egencia have all the tools they need to empower their travellers to rent a car with confidence. These include flexible payment options, like lodge card and direct billing. Options that support travellers to manage their own travel spend and expenses within the platform – without having to collect piles of paper receipts and payment details. A huge benefit for travel managers, who would otherwise be churning through hours to sift through receipts in order to match them to and approve expenses.

Travel managers with Egencia are safe in the knowledge that our platform will help their travellers take control of their own timetable, comfort and spend.

The Egencia effect on your business’s bottom line

Let’s imagine two of your business development executives are scheduled to visit a client based in Aberdeen, Scotland. Given that Aberdeen is a small city with only a few flights a day, you advise them to fly from their base in London to Edinburgh and use a rental car for the final leg. That car will be essential to get around Aberdeen and gives them the option of dropping in on a prospect located en route, in Dundee.

At London, they encounter flight delays. They contact customer service only to discover that no change in the car booking is needed – a car rental booking on our platform includes the flight code, so the rental company is automatically updated with their new ETA. The flight arrives very late, so upon arrival, they decide to stay the night in Edinburgh rather than start driving. With Egencia, it’s easy, they simply cancel or exchange the bookings via the app on their smartphones, and this does not incur an additional fee.

Your business development execs saved a huge amount of fuss by travelling with Egencia, and they’re happy travellers. What’s more, they’re loyal and feeling engaged with your company, safe in the knowledge that their comfort and welfare is a business priority.

Even when one of the execs receives a promotion a few months later, which includes relocation, their experience remains the same. The Egencia platform allows for a globally consistent experience for travellers and travel managers, no matter where they’re based.

The benefits in brief

Booking and amending rental cars for business travel has never been more straightforward. Here’s a reminder of the key benefits that you and your travellers can leverage with Egencia:

• A dedicated platform accessible from any device, which shows multiple options from different suppliers. Travellers can easily compare offers before choosing the one that best suits their needs (no matter where they are in the world) and your travel policy.
• A guaranteed 5% off published rates on Egencia-preferred suppliers, helping you ensure that you are maximising your travel investments.
• A single source for both individual bookings and consolidated car rental data which has a powerful data analytics facility to personalise choices for travellers (and allows managers to identify usage trends and opportunities for future savings).