At Egencia, we take travel seriously. We don’t play games or tell travel managers to dangle carrots in front of their business travelers to get them to comply with policy. Instead, we provide a single, easy-to-use corporate travel platform that will help your business save time and money — no gimmicks needed.

Let’s face it — money matters to every business and time is valuable. Whether you’re a global organization or a small or medium-sized business, with our business travel technology you can build and monitor a travel program that eliminates guesswork. Our platform meets your specific needs when it comes to travel spend, expenses, and compliance. You can save time with up-to-date reports, streamline travel expense processing, and easily book travel from any device.  

Here are 19 ways we can help you save time and money:

1. Negotiate the best business trip rates

We offer a huge supply of travel options, with exclusive, preferred rates, across the globe. How do we do this? As part of Expedia Group, we have extensive scale when it comes to what we can offer. Whether you’re booking travel in one region or worldwide, we can accommodate complex travel programs or offer solutions for your specific business needs. And you don’t need to worry about having suppliers in every region where your travelers need to go — our supply is open to all of our customers.

As a bonus, the variety of travel options aren’t limited to hotels, so your travelers can choose from a wide selection of air, car rental, and rail. Our technology surfaces the most relevant content — meaning that you, and your travelers, save time. No more sorting through endless lists of irrelevant travel options or multiple booking tools — you save time and keep business travelers happy with choices that matter to them.

2.  Boost travel policy compliance

We’ll help you structure a managed travel program that achieves compliance. Think of the time you’ll save if you don’t have to chase down travelers that go rogue. And think of the travel spend you can save if you have a travel policy that makes it easy for travelers to stay in compliance. On top of that, you can control costs even more by setting spending caps in your policy, making saving money and compliance a breeze. 

In our experience, we’ve found that if travelers can use a clear, easy-to-understand corporate travel policy that suits their travel needs, they’re likely to be happier. Traveler satisfaction can help you retain highly valued road warriors or it can be touted as one of your company’s benefits when speaking with potential employees.

4. Airfare savings

Savings Finder for Air constantly searches for lower-cost flights and alerts you when savings are found. How much can you save? We’ve been able to deliver average savings of $170 per plane ticket in the US and an average of $660 in EMEA and APAC. 

5. Save money on hotels

Beyond saving money on airfare, you can also realize more savings when it comes to hotels. We always provide you with the best preferred rates, and our Air and Hotel packages help you save even more when you book flights and hotel rooms within 10 days. What’s even better is that these savings are surfaced to you — there’s no need to hunt and peck to cobble together the most cost-effective package for your travelers. 

The savings don’t stop there. Our Savings Finder for Hotel eliminates the frustration of seeing room rates drop after you book. Using machine learning (ML) to search for price drops, we’re always on the lookout for ways to save you money. If we find a rate that’s at least $10 less than your original booking, we’ll automatically book the lower rate for you — you don’t need to lift a finger — and we’ve been able to save our customers an average of $37. We also know that things can change at the last minute, and that’s why you can save up to 70 percent on last-minute bookings with the Egencia mobile app.

6. Simplify the browsing experience

Technology is in our DNA. It’s been the driver of everything we’ve built, and we constantly iterate and innovate to deliver the best single business travel platform to you.

We’d like to introduce you to Smart Mix, which uses ML to provide you the best hotel and air sort for your business. What does this mean for booking flights and hotels? You’ll get the most options that meet your policy, with personalized choices and rates surfaced to the top.

How do we do this? Essentially, with ML, we train artificial intelligence (AI) to find patterns in our data. We have billions and billions of bytes of data, and what AI does is find repeated data points that wouldn’t be obvious to humans who can’t process that much data quickly. This makes the entire travel management system more predictive and action oriented.

With this technology, we can give you what you want as your first choice — that’s the power of ML and AI. For example, let’s say you have a bi-annual event every year, one in Berlin and one in San Francisco. Our ML knows what hotel chains, flight times, and ground transportation options your travelers prefer, so those results are what you see first.  

7. Connect with your hotel — before check-in

When your travelers are on the road, time is of the essence. Between getting to the airport and catching a flight or a connection, the last thing they need is to try to figure out how to get to their hotel, grab a bite to eat, or log on to Wi-Fi in their room. Hotel Conversations lets business travelers speak directly to the hotel, so they can find out if there’s a shuttle at the airport, if the hotel has a restaurant, and if Wi-Fi login information will be in their room when they arrive.

8. Drive online booking adoption

With an online adoption rate of more than 90 percent, we return productivity to you through our intuitive booking platform that’s easily accessible from any device.  

9. Travelers get help when they need it, wherever they are

It’s a given that when people are on the road, things don’t always go as planned. We’re here to help your travelers with always-on customer service, 24/7 every day of the year. The mobile app features AssistMe with callback functionality and our highly trained consultants can help with complex travel itineraries. We also offer native language support with customer support teams that speak more than 30 languages.

10. Monitor your travel spend

The value of ongoing and consistent reporting is important to anyone managing a travel program. The Egencia Analytics Studio is an easy-to-use data visualization tool that lets you constantly monitor your business travel budget and keep a close eye on your spend. It’s easy to zero in on what your travel spend is, day-to-day, month-to-month or year-over-year. You can gain insights on how you can save money and look at spending trends to analyze and implement in your program.

11. Find your travelers, wherever they are

Taking care of your travelers is important to you, them, and your business. Ensuring your travelers are safe also helps your bottom line. In the event you need to quickly locate your travelers, Traveler Tracker lets you search by city or a specific region on a map. Whether it’s a weather system that could disrupt travel plans or a rail workers’ strike, finding and alerting your business travelers to any potential impacts is at your fingertips. And if you need to find out where your travelers have been, you can also take a rearview 30-day look at their travel. 

12. Alert business travelers

We help your business travelers stay one step ahead of any travel changes or last-minute updates with flight alerts, so you don’t have to. Your travelers also have the option to use Online Air Exchange, a platform feature that allows them to change flights on the web or in the app, with instant visibility to any changes in fares or penalties. 

13. Integrate with HR and expense systems

We make it easy to adopt a travel management program, which means you can save time and money. Simply set up your travel policy and integrate it with HR and your expense system with a few clicks. Your travel program dashboard will provide you a complete view of your company’s savings, spend, and travel trends.

14. Manage business travel expenses

Managing travel expenses across multiple credit card receipts and reconciling accounts can be time-consuming and tedious. We offer streamlined, end-to-end expense processing with multiple providers to free up your time and your travelers’.

15. Save in bulk

Group Trip is a collaboration platform feature that saves time by alerting a specific number of people simultaneously instead of creating a back-and-forth email chain. It’s easy to view and book similar flight times and hotels and track group arrival times for coordinated (and cost-saving) ground transportation.

16. Streamline approvals

Out of the office and need to modify or make travel arrangements? With just one tap, trips are approved with Arranger Mode.

17. Hire expert help

Let our travel management consultants provide expert advice and help you assess your travel program to find potential savings, streamline operations, suggest ways you can make your travel program more sustainable, and manage your hotel RFP program.

18. Save with value-added partnerships

We go way beyond booking and offer services you and your travelers need the most on the road. The Egencia Advantage program is a one-stop shop that provides access to AirHelp, insurance, visa services, and more.

19. Get the best rates

Optimize your travel program and fine tune your policy by finding hidden savings. It can be appealing to cut back on travel by simply curbing spend, but there are smarter ways to save. 

With Egencia Analytics Studio, you can analyze your travel data and find saving opportunities with our Benchmarking dashboard. The Benchmarking dashboard lets you look at hotel destinations by spend, negotiate rates with hotels that meet your eco-friendly goals and look at top airline routes. You can also measure your travel spend against that of similarly sized companies. Armed with this data, you can approach suppliers with confidence to renegotiate rates.

Travel expenses are part of the cost of doing business, and it can be challenging to navigate the business travel landscape on your own. At Egencia, we’re a travel management company that makes sure you get the most out of your investment. We have all the travel spend management services and support you need to determine how to realize corporate travel savings during times of crisis or how to optimize your travel management program.