Spotlight On: Travel Intent & Expense Management

ABOUT OUR CLIENT:

Our client is an influential name in the world of luxury airline travel; they offer an unparalleled travel experience, combining modern, state-of-the-art aircraft with exceptional personalised services. Their commitment to luxury, comfort, and safety has enabled them to attain a global reach and exclusive destinations, making every journey seamless and memorable. With the freedom of private charters, premium amenities, and elite concierge services, they are essentially a gateway to sophisticated and stress-free travel.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Owing to their manual system of making travel arrangements; they were conducting all travel arrangements & bookings via airline or other travel websites using the staff’s personal credit cards. This process increased their TAT because there were no travel intent policies that were well-defined; not to mention the lack of a centralised payment process.

The specific problems that this client was facing in terms of booking business travel, was two-fold:?

1. Travel Intent: Flight Disruption?

Our client wanted to ensure that passenger bookings from disrupted flights, if any, would be transferred and completed as seamlessly as possible.?

There was also the added problem of segregating their costs by travel intent during the flight disruption periods.?

2. Travel Intent: Crew Positioning?

Another major problem that our client was facing was that there was no account for the flights or hotel stays booked by their crew as it was all done through personal credit cards. Accountability became an issue with this process simply because:

• There was no control on booking approvals or flight selections
• There were no options available for cost comparison so there was no scope to send for approvals based on company policies

3. Expense Centralisation

Personal credit cards were being used which caused delay in reimbursements. Due to lack of approvals policies & categorisation of cost ceilings for each level of staff, the budget was negatively impacted due to personal choices & fluctuating prices.

OUR SOLUTION:?

Thanks to the musafirbiz platform, we are able to tailor solutions that fit the unique requirements of individual clients. For this particular two-fold problem our team of business travel solutions’ experts were able to create a consolidated dashboard that would become the solutions to their problems in the following ways:?

• Through their tailored musafirbiz platform they can now define their own travel policies and create travel intent that allows them to track those policies and expenses of their employees.?

• Our client can now create multiple policies that address separate verticals of flight bookings, hotel stays, etc. depending on their existing hierarchical practices and travel intent.
• There is a built-in mechanism now on their customised musafirbiz dashboard that allows their manager/TL to select “tag” for creating new bookings for disrupted flights’ passengers by simply selecting the option “Book for guests”. This makes it much easier for their employees to find alternative travel options for disrupted passengers.

• Once their passenger has accepted the new flight option, our client can then turn to the musafirbiz approval workflow wherein the necessary HoDs can approve/reject the expenses. The transparency of the musafirbiz approval workflow makes it easier for our client during auditing times.

Our centralised payment option allows purchases only after verification through a purchase order number generated by the client’s finance department after approval.