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What is travel management? Components, benefits, and setup
What travel management covers and how to set up a program in 6 steps.
Travel management, also called corporate travel management (CTM), is the practice of planning, booking, controlling, and tracking your company’s business travel so trips stay on budget, efficient, and safe.
This guide contains:
- What travel management covers
- Travel management vs. a TMC and a TMS
- Key components of a travel management program
- How to set up a travel management program
If your team travels internationally, Holafly for Business keeps employees online with secure mobile data.
Business travel made easy
What travel management covers
Travel management covers trip planning, booking, expense tracking, reimbursements, compliance, supplier relationships, and reporting. Without travel management, employees book trips on consumer sites and expense them later. There are no shared rules or central data, and no one is accountable for the outcome.
A managed program replaces that with policies, processes, and tools built around three goals:
- Cost control: Managing and reducing what your company spends on travel and expenses.
- Efficiency: Making booking and expense reporting faster, so travelers and finance teams spend less time on admin.
- Duty of care: Keeping traveling employees safe before, during, and after a trip.
Now, who runs it depends on your size.
Larger companies may hire a dedicated travel manager, while at smaller ones the job often falls to someone in finance, operations, or HR, or to an outside partner.
Travel management vs. a TMC and a TMS
You’ll often see two related terms in connection with travel management, and they describe who or what does the work.
Here’s how they compare:
- A travel management company (TMC) is an external partner that manages your travel. Its agents book trips inside your policy, negotiate rates with suppliers, report on spend, and rebook travelers when plans change.
- A travel management system (TMS) is software that integrates booking, policy, budgeting, and reporting into one interface, allowing employees to book their own trips within policy.
A key part of a TMS is the online booking tool (OBT), a self-service platform that allows employees to search for and book flights, hotels, and cars.
You can run travel management in-house with a TMS, hand it to a TMC, or combine the two.
Why travel management is important
Business travel is a high and growing cost.
According to the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), global business travel spending grew 8.4% in 2025 to $1.59 trillion.
When no one manages that spend, here’s what it costs you:
- Uncontrolled spending: Last-minute fares and out-of-budget hotels go through because no policy stops them.
- Lost time: Admins, managers, and finance teams spend hours on bookings, receipt chasing, and expense cleanup, and the “unofficial travel desk” feels free because nobody invoices for it.
- No visibility: You can’t budget or forecast travel spend you can’t see.
- Wasted money: Unused airline credits expire, and scattered bookings leave you no volume to negotiate rates with.
- Risk: If something goes wrong, nobody knows where travelers are, and your company carries the legal and safety exposure.
A managed program turns each of these around, with lower travel costs, less admin for travelers and finance, fewer out-of-policy bookings, and better data for budgeting.
Travelers also get easier booking, stored preferences, and 24/7 help when plans change.
Key components of a travel management program
Your program needs five parts working together to meet those goals, from the rules travelers follow to the support they get on the road.
Here’s what each part does:
1. Travel policy
Your business travel policy for employees is the rulebook for how teams book travel and what they spend. It’s the foundation of the program, as without it, you have no basis for controlling costs or keeping decisions consistent.
2. Booking tools and technology
An OBT gives travelers a place to compare and book flights, hotels, cars, and rail, with your policy rules built in (e.g., it can hide hotels with nightly rates above a set threshold).
Approval workflows route each trip to the right manager and flag or block out-of-policy bookings. Mobile apps let travelers check itineraries and rebook on the go (see our guide to booking business travel).
3. Expense management and budgeting
When bookings and expenses are in one system, bookings automatically flow into expense reports. That reduces manual errors (e.g., a $12 airport sandwich entered as $120).
When your company pays for major costs (e.g., flights and hotels) via centralized payments, employees have fewer out-of-pocket expenses to claim back.
To learn more, check our guide to travel and expense management.
4. Reporting and supplier management
Reporting gives you a view of spend across departments, travelers, vendors, and categories. It surfaces patterns worth fixing, such as last-minute flights or hotels paid at full price.
The same data shows how much you spend with each airline, hotel chain, and car rental company, which is your leverage to get business travel discounts.
5. Duty of care and traveler support
Business travel duty of care is your legal and ethical obligation to protect traveling employees from foreseeable harm.
Your program supports it with:
- Traveler tracking (with employee consent)
- Pre-trip safety briefings
- Travel alerts about risks at the destination
- 24/7 emergency and rebooking support when flights are canceled or reservations are lost
Signs you’ve outgrown manual travel management
A quick self-check shows whether manual travel management still works for your company.
Here’s what to look for:
| Sign | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| No spend visibility | You can’t say how much you spent on travel last quarter |
| Scattered bookings | Employees book on different sites and ignore the policy |
| Rising costs | Travel costs grow faster than revenue |
| Admin overload | Finance or admin staff spend hours each week on bookings and expense cleanup |
| No disruption support | A canceled flight turns into an emergency because nobody is on call |
| Safety and compliance needs | You need to locate travelers during a disruption, but have no way to do it |
If two or more of these apply, it’s likely time to consider a managed program.
In this case, you can start without a TMC and build the program in-house if fewer than 50 employees travel occasionally and trips are mostly simple and domestic.
How to set up a travel management program in 6 steps
You can build a program in six steps, starting with the travel your company already does.
1. Assess your current travel
Before you set rules, review your past travel data. Pull your bookings and expense reports, and note your:
- Trip volume and frequency
- Common destinations
- Reasons for travel
- Spend by team
2. Set goals and assign owners
Pick two or three goals (e.g., controlling costs, protecting travelers, making booking easier) and set a corporate travel budget to match.
Then, name an executive sponsor, often the CFO or head of HR, and decide who approves exceptions.
Even if you outsource to a TMC, it’s important to keep someone inside the company accountable for the program, because while a TMC follows your policy, someone in-house has to own the budget and results.
3. Write a travel policy
As far as travel policy best practices go, it’s best to gather input from frequent travelers, HR, and finance before you write the policy.
Then, ensure it covers:
- Who can travel and for what purposes
- How and where to book
- Spending limits for flights, hotels, and meals
- Approval steps
- Preferred vendors
- Expense rules
- Safety and emergency procedures
- Destinations or uses that aren’t permitted
Lastly, keep the policy easy to find (e.g., in a travel handbook on Confluence).
4. Choose your tools and partners
Decide whether to run travel in-house or with a TMC, then pick your technology.
Small teams with simple trips can start with corporate travel software for booking, while growing companies often pair it with travel and expense management software.
Compare options on features, support, and integrations with your accounting tools, and use demos or free trials to test how easy they are to use.
5. Set up supplier partnerships
You can tap into a TMC’s existing supplier network or negotiate with airlines, hotels, and car rental companies on your own.
If you go with a TMC, ask which of its discounts are consortium rates, pooled across all its clients and available from day one, and which depend on your own travel volume.
6. Train, pilot, and review
Explain the policy and booking process to employees, especially frequent travelers. We recommend you pilot the program with one team before rolling it out company-wide.
Review spend data and traveler feedback monthly at first, then quarterly.
You can then tighten unclear rules, loosen overly restrictive ones, and renegotiate rates as your volume grows.
Common challenges in travel management
Once your program is running, you might encounter a few recurring problems.
Here are the most common ones:
- Changing travel regulations: Keeping up with entry rules is hardest for international trips, and domestic changes (e.g., the REAL ID requirement) can cause problems for travelers, too.
- Traveler preferences and cost: One employee wants the late flight the night before, and another wants to fly in that morning. Balancing these against the budget gets harder as you grow.
- Policy adoption: Getting employees to book through approved channels requires training and a booking tool that surfaces in-policy options first.
- Supplier incentives: Some TMCs earn commissions or override payments from airlines and hotels when they meet volume targets, which can influence their recommendations.
Give traveling employees secure data with Holafly for Business
Once your travel program is running, secure mobile data is part of the plan.
Holafly for Business is a business eSIM provider available in 160+ destinations, activating on your team’s devices so travelers don’t have to hunt for local SIM cards or incur roaming charges. Travel managers also get access to our centralized management platform, the Holafly Business Center, where they can manage individual eSIMs, invoices, and data usage.
Holafly Plans for Business come in four tiers, all featuring hotspot, 4G/5G, and 24/7 multilingual support:
- Daily: Unlimited data with pay-per-day flexibility, built for short business trips under 16 days a month.
- Monthly: Unlimited data for teams traveling more than 16 days a month, a fit for frequent travelers and long-term remote staff.
- Annual: Unlimited data for ultra-frequent travelers, suited to long-term global operations and predictable annual budgets.
- Enterprise: Bespoke plans for companies managing travel for 20+ employees a year, with volume discounts, a dedicated account manager, priority support, and custom integrations, built to optimize costs, streamline operations, and ensure seamless global connectivity across teams.
Not sure which plan is right for your team? Book a demo.
Business travel made easy
FAQ
A travel management company (TMC) works only with businesses and offers travel policy design, automated booking, spend reporting, and negotiated rates in addition to booking trips. A traditional travel agency can book corporate travel too, but it usually lacks tools for policy enforcement and spend analytics.
A TMC and an online booking tool (OBT) often work together, with employees booking routine trips themselves in the OBT. The TMC then steps in for complex itineraries, international trips, group travel, and 24/7 agent support.
TMC costs depend on the fee model, your travel volume, and how often travelers use agents, as online bookings usually cost less than agent-assisted ones. Common models include a per-booking transaction fee, a fixed management fee, a hybrid of the two, and cost-plus pricing, in which the TMC marks up supplier rates.
When choosing a travel management company, compare its experience with that of companies of your size, its geographic coverage, supplier network, integrations with your expense and HR systems, and support hours. It’s also a good idea to ask for a full breakdown of fees, including any supplier-side revenue, before you sign.
Major travel management companies include American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), BCD Travel, CTM, FCM Travel Solutions, and Navan. The right fit depends on your company size, travel volume, and the level of service you need.
I’m a writer with over eight years of experience in digital content. My work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, Business Insider, and the BBC. At Holafly, I write clear, practical guides to help travelers stay connected with eSIM technology. In my spare time, I enjoy car detailing, biking around Warsaw, and capturing portraits.
