As a travel manager, you’ll agree that managing corporate travel can be overwhelming. The list seems endless, from planning to getting stakeholders’ approvals to staying within your company’s budget.
This is where travel management companies (TMC) come in. With TMCs, you can manage every aspect of your business trips in one place. For example, you can book tickets, manage your travellers’ itineraries, and track your travel spend.
In this article, we’ve outlined some of Glasgow’s best business travel management companies.
But before that, what features should you look for when choosing a business travel management company?
Features to look for when choosing a travel management company
Many travel management companies for businesses in Glasgow 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 rates and 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 options enable 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.
4 best business travel management companies in Glasgow
Now that you understand the features to look out for when picking a suitable business travel management company let’s review some of the best TMCs to consider in Glasgow.
1. TravelPerk
TravelPerk is an all-in-one platform for managing corporate travel. It is equipped with features essential for booking travel and managing business trips in one place. It also provides full transparency over your spend, travelling schedules, and workflows.
Not only that, TravelPerk helps save time as you can collect, view, and track all your traveller’s data in a centralized dashboard. This removes the stress of manually collecting data from different platforms (i.e., emails, Slack messages, and meetings).
TravelPerk also gives you access to the world’s most extensive travel inventory for flights, train, car rental and accommodation providers.
Other notable features of TravelPerk include:
Additionally, to help cater to the needs of business travellers in Glasgow and the UK at large, TravelPerk acquired ClickTravel, a leading business travel management company in the UK. ClickTravel leverages technology to streamline domestic business travel in the UK.
On top of all of that, TravelPerk has an event management feature that lets you plan event-based business trips. With a click, you can invite attendees, book tickets, pick suitable locations, and schedule events. This feature provides an opportunity for companies with remote or hybrid teams to connect with their employees in real life.
Overall, TravelPerk offers a wide range of integrations featuring expense management, duty of care, and security solutions. You can explore our marketplace and customize your integrations today, to suit your travel needs.
See how TravelPerk makes business travel stress free
2. Stewart Travel Management
Steward Travel Management is a UK-based agency that focuses on providing marine and offshore travelling programs. They have a marine team that provides round-the-clock support for marine and offshore crew on every aspect of their travel needs.
Overall, this agency helps organizations source the best and most cost-effective means of transportation.
Here are some of the business travel services Stewart Travel Management offers:
- Personalized corporate travel management
- Dedicated Account Manager
- Dedicated Conference & Event management team
- Transportation & accommodation (airfares, hotels, rail, ferry, and car hire)
- Tailored self-booking tool
- 24-hour emergency assistance service
- Visa & passport service
- Tailored management reporting
- Flexible payment solutions (including credit terms)
Although Stewart Travel Management provides a good range of features for corporate travellers, the agency is not an end-to-end solution.
For example, the agency doesn’t support invoicing, VAT recovery, and carbon offsetting, which are essential when making travel arrangements. Stewart Travel Management lacks a comprehensive travel management report system which helps finance teams have visibility of the company’s travel spend. Without this system, it will be difficult to create comprehensive travel reports and make data-informed travel decisions in your organization.
Additionally, Stewart Travel Management agency does not provide real-time updates on issues affecting global travel. This makes it difficult to get accurate information on any restrictions or local guidelines that would ensure a safe business trip. On the other hand, TravelPerk has a built-in travel risk management solution called TravelCare that provides all the latest information on travel restrictions at your fingertips.
3. Agiito
Agiito is a UK travel agency that helps companies manage travelling, meetings, and events. They help organise and book corporate trips while considering the safety and well-being of your employees. They can also help you manage your travel programmes and plan business events.
Below are some of the features Agiito offers corporate travellers:
- Access to over 300,000+ properties
- Carbon offsetting Air booking & rail booking
- Door-to-door taxi, car, and coach hire
- Premium chauffeur service
- Traveller tracking and risk management to ensure the safety of your employees.
Despite all the features Agiito provides to corporate travellers, the agency lacks a comprehensive travel & expense reporting system. Users can’t get full visibility of their travel spend.
Also, Agiito has a limited option of properties your organization can choose from compared to TravelPerk which has the largest worldwide inventory of corporate accommodation available. TravelPerk provides users with accommodation listings on Global Distribution Systems (GDS) like Amadeus and Online Travel Agency (OTA) like Booking.com and Expedia.
4. Clyde Travel Management
Clyde Travel Management is a travel management company in Glasgow. Primarily, they offer crew mobilization for the marine, offshore, and renewable energy sectors.
Clyde Travel Management also provides a travel technology that lets users book trips and manage corporate travels effectively and without stress.
Here are some of the services this TMC offers:
- Ticket booking
- Dedicated travel managers
- Travel insights
- Customisable travel policies
- 24/7 customer support
Despite Clyde Travel Management providing a wide range of services for business travellers, its offering has many gaps. It does not have a sustainability program like TravelPerk’s GreenPerk program that allows travellers to offset their carbon emissions for more sustainable travel. Also, Clyde Travel Management doesn’t offer flexible online booking and cancellation policies. With TravelPerk, you can cancel business trips up to two hours before departure and still get a guaranteed refund of 80%.
To see how our platform can take your business travel management solutions to the next level, schedule a live, personalized TravelPerk demo today!
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