With the rise of work-from-home and work-from-anywhere trends, as well as the blending of business and leisure travel (also known as "bleisure" trips), many corporations have shifted their focus from being responsible for the safety and security of the traveler to being accountable for the safety and security of the employee, regardless of their location. As a result, companies are now less concerned with the distinction between business and personal trips.
At Traxo, we have innovated in and received a patent on broad automatic travel booking detection and capture with support for 100s of places where travelers buy travel. This capability helps companies gain complete program oversight, but many travel managers still wonder how to handle the personal and bleisure trips that occasionally come into the corporate travel program. This blog will explore how some of our largest clients are addressing personal trips today.
Most travel booking sites now offer two versions of their platform: one for leisure travel and one for business travel. This allows reservations to be routed to the correct place, with leisure bookings typically being sent to the traveler's personal email account and corporate bookings being sent to the traveler's corporate inbox. This distinction helps to reduce the number of personal trips that come into a company's travel program.
An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is a way for companies to protect themselves from corporate risk when it comes to capturing personal trip data. AUPs are a set of rules that a user must agree to in order to access a corporate network, the internet, or other resources. These policies stipulate the constraints and practices that a user must adhere to.
Nearly all businesses and educational institutions require employees or students to sign an AUP. These policies explicitly cover the fact that companies own, operate, and have the rights to monitor company assets such as the company email server.
In the context of capturing personal trip data, an AUP can help reduce corporate risk by ensuring that employees are aware of the company's policies and guidelines regarding travel, including information on what type of travel is acceptable, as well as any budget constraints or requirements for booking travel through a designated system or agency.
By requiring employees to sign an AUP, companies can ensure that employees are aware that the company has the right to access their email and other company assets, which can help to prevent employees from booking personal trips using company resources.
Several large multinational corporations use Traxo as an integral part of their strategy to address personal trips. For example, a global consulting firm differentiates business vs leisure trips using a robotic chat process, while a global technology company plans to sort business vs leisure trips using an email-based process. Another Traxo client, on the other hand, does not differentiate—they load all detected trips into their security and location awareness applications so they can provide duty of care for all employee trips that come through their system.
Another important aspect of effectively managing bleisure trips is the ability to track and analyze data on those bookings. This includes tracking the cost of flights, hotels, and other expenses, as well as the dates and destinations of employee travel. By accessing complete data on employee travel bookings through Traxo’s real-time data aggregation tool, companies can gain valuable insights into their overall travel expenses and booking patterns, which inform future budgeting and travel program planning decisions.
Overall, effectively managing bleisure trips can help companies improve employee satisfaction and safety while also better controlling and managing their travel spend. By having a central system in place, establishing clear guidelines and policies, and maintaining oversight by tracking and analyzing data on all employee travel, companies can better manage bleisure trips and ensure that their employees are booking travel in a way that aligns with the company's overall goals and objectives while protecting travelers and the company.