A group dental practice or DSO with offices spread across a wide geographic area can incur substantial travel costs.
One often overlooked potential for savings is using AirBRB for Work. It has been gaining so much popularity that business travelers now account for 15% of the company’s bookings. According to AirBNB, almost 700,000 businesses have signed up and booked lodging through the service.
Usage of AirBNB for Work spans across all company sizes. The company says 40% of business travelers utilizing the service work for small and medium-sized businesses. 20% work for mid-size companies, with the remaining 40% being enterprise employees.
Nearly 60% of bookings were for more than one guest. This provides your group or DSO potential savings by having two employees book a two bedroom condo together. They will each be able to enjoy the privacy of their own room while sharing the common areas. A kitchen may encourage them to cook, which will lower dining expenses.
There are also other ways to more easily control travel spend. NexTravel provides a travel portal that rivals those of the biggest corporate travel agencies and runs about $10 per month, per employee. Their airfare, rental car, and lodging pricing tend to skew lower than direct booking as they pass their own volume discounts onto users.
With NexTravel, employers are able to set spending limits on a group or per-user basis. Employees can enter their own rewards numbers to collect perks. If you have already negotiated discounts with travel providers, you can enter your account numbers so that pricing is reflective of your contract.
If your employees will not be moving around much on the ground, using an Uber or Lyft business account may be cheaper than a car rental.
Keeping track of receipts — especially during an extended stay — can be daunting. Tools like Concur and Expensify help employees capture expenses as they are incurred and more easily submit expense reports.
By controlling your travel spend you are able to better control your bottom line. Above are just a few tools you can employ to begin systemizing travel within your growing business.
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