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Business Travel in the Future: How Men and Women Will Travel in 2024

Pia Heßler1/11/2024

Here come the trends and best practices for business trips in the coming years

Table of contents

What must employers consider for business trips?
This is what business trips look like in the future
How a travel management tool for business travel supports you
Conclusion: Traveling for business has never been so easy

The travel industry is more complex than ever: global events like the Corona time have shaken us up well. After the first Corona year resembled a state of shock, we have almost reached the pre-crisis level after a travel season with many restrictions. Companies and their employees are now all the more looking forward to facing their business partners in person again.

Now it's all about getting your bearings in a world full of booking platforms and mobility options. While keeping travel costs as low as possible, which proves not so easy, as tour operators and transport companies have partially massively increased their prices.

The changes of recent years have fortunately led to technological innovations in the travel industry. If you too want to be your own travel expert for business trips from now on and save a lot of time and money in the process, you should not miss this article.

What must employers consider for business trips?

Every business trip involves costs. Self-employed individuals and entrepreneurs offset travel expenses as business expenses from tax. Companies usually reimburse their employees for expenses through travel expense accounting.

However, by signing the employment contract, employers not only commit to the timely payment of salary and reimbursement of travel expenses. Another duty of the employer is the so-called duty of care (Federal Law Code, §§ 617 to 619). Accordingly, business trips must always be designed to be attractive and safe. The well-being of employees must be at the center. The implementation concerns not only business owners, but also the HR department and possibly other departments.

Companies and employees face some challenges:

Cost pressure: Travel planning should cause as little cost as possible.
Time pressure: Employees invest a lot of time in extensive travel planning.
Complicated collaboration: All parties involved use different systems, making it cumbersome and incomplete to merge data.
Paperwork: All kinds of receipts (mostly in paper form) are generated during travel planning.
Independent processes: Important processes (e.g. the accounting process) are not integrated, making them laborious and prone to errors.
Conformity on the part of employees: It is difficult for employees to demonstrate that they are fulfilling their duty of loyalty (such as handling resources prudently and adhering to the company's travel policies).
Compliance on the part of the company: It is difficult for employers to demonstrate compliance with their duty of care.

This is what business trips look like in the future

Although the zooming workforce has gotten used to home office and digital meetings, personal exchange is still meaningful. Often, on-site meetings are simply more effective and strengthen the bond between the interlocutors. Therefore, they are not usually completely replaced. At least regular team events and employee retreats from the pre-Corona times will remain. Certain appointments simply cannot be held remotely due to their content: As helpful as remote maintenance may be, sometimes a physical inspection and an associated trip are inevitable. A continuing upward trend is expected for the year 2024.

Watch out, here come some exciting numbers from DMM – the mobility manager:

Increase in willingness to travel: 57 percent of the surveyed companies expect an increase in the travel budget for 2024 compared to 2023.
Turnover through personality: Experts expect 25 percent more turnover from personal meetings.
Environment: For 54 percent of the respondents, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is the top priority of their sustainability priorities. They seem to be willing to pay a higher price for this.
Extended weekend: 67 percent of the respondents have already extended their professional stays for private purposes.
Well-being: Based on experience, four out of five travelers actively do something every day to improve their well-being.

The fact is: Business travel is really picking up again!

How a travel management tool for business travel supports you

Business Travel in the Future with Lanes & Planes

The number one contact point for booking business trips used to be travel agencies. Meanwhile, technology companies also offer support for flight and hotel bookings. The industry was forced to continue evolving with new innovative solutions, and it has done its job! The travel management solution Lanes & Planes for example, covers all activities of your future business trip from approval to planning and implementation to billing in one intuitive tool. The certified data center of the software company is located in Düsseldorf. To meet the individual requirements of large companies and corporations, the company has entered into a strategic partnership with the All for One Group. According to their own statements, savings of up to 30 percent with the Lanes & Planes app are realistic.

This is how you make your business trips comfortable and affordable with the all-in-one platform:

Booking management of the digital travel agency: Connection to over 100 reservation portals and direct interfaces (from flight and train to hotel and Airbnb to car rental booking)
Digital travel expense management: e.g. expense management, tax-compliant invoice creation, uncomplicated refund of VAT
Request and approval management: with approval and authorization processes
Mobile application: for example travel plans with tickets and information, delay alert and live updates as well as in-app customer support, submission of receipts with OCR text recognition
Data flow: Seamless integration into HR and ERP systems
Transparency: Personal accounts instead of shared company accounts
Monitoring: Analysis and evaluation of travel costs and activities
Conformity: compliance with archiving, compliance and sustainability guidelines (e.g. GoBD compatibility, travel risk management & duty of care, emission display per booking)
Travel service consulting – Made in Germany: e.g. 24/7 travel service by trained travel agents and personal contact persons

App for business trips of the future

Conclusion: Traveling for business has never been so easy

Some apps for business travel already take a lot of work off your hands through an integrated travel expense management. If you want even more, you should definitely try Lanes & Planes . This saves you the eternal search for accommodations and flights or train tickets on all platforms. Now you just need to book the best offer, check in directly via your mobile phone and enjoy the business trip of the future.

Software mentioned in the article

Lanes & Planes
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Product or service categories mentioned in the article

Travel Management

Travel management software provides users a platform for planning and purchasing travel, as well as capturing travel expenses. Companies use this software to simplify purchasing decisions, centralize records of employee travel expenses, and control the company's travel budget. Travel expense management solutions provide users with a tool for booking and automatically recording their travel purchases, instead of delegating individual employees or submitting self-purchased receipts to an expense management software. Moreover, this software improves transparency between managers and employees regarding business travel, and allows accountants and managers to generate reportings and reimburse employees for travel expenses. A travel management tool also ensures that the employees' work-related travel complies with the company policies. The software solutions in this category are often part of a tool with expense management features and mileage counter, or provide these features themselves. However, travel management systems specifically focus on the billing of travel expenses. In order to qualify as travel management software, a solution must: * provide a platform for travel booking * capture expenses related to employee travel * provide integration with expense management software or provide expense management features * print or submit travel expense bills * include company policy for business travel compliance * control the company's travel budget * increase transparency between managers and employees regarding business travel

Cash Flow Management

Cash Flow Management Software refers to digital solutions designed to monitor, analyze, and forecast incoming and outgoing cash flows to ensure an organization’s financial stability and liquidity at all times. Solutions in the Cash Flow Management Software category are primarily used by finance teams, controllers*, treasury managers*, and executives* in small, medium-sized, and large organizations. They help users* gain transparency into financial movements, anticipate liquidity shortages early, and support data-driven financial decision-making across departments. Cash Flow Management Software is commonly applied in financial planning, treasury operations, risk management, and budgeting and forecasting processes. By consolidating financial information from multiple systems and enabling scenario-based planning, these solutions create a reliable foundation for operational and strategic decisions. In addition, they improve cross-departmental collaboration and provide real-time visibility into payment flows, allowing organizations to react more quickly to changing financial conditions. To be included in the Cash Flow Management Software category, a solution should offer the following features and characteristics: - Cash flow forecasting and liquidity projections - Integration with accounting and ERP systems - Scenario analysis and simulation capabilities - Automated reporting and dashboard functions - Clear visualization of incoming and outgoing payments

Accounting

Accounting software, also known as bookkeeping software, facilitates the day-to-day business of accounting department employees by digitally mapping all important tasks and processes of accounting or bookkeeping, or parts of it. Thus, it also contributes to the digitalization of businesses. The software is used in all areas of accounting, such as financial accounting, accounts receivable accounting, and payroll accounting, and enables small, medium and large businesses to implement efficient accounting processes and improve internal collaboration. Important features of accounting software include digital document capture, online banking connectivity and payment services providers, integrated CRM or an interface to a customer relationship management system, inventory management and order overview, and project management. Invoice creation is also part of accounting. While some accounting software have this integrated, there are also specialized invoice programs. Accounting can also be a module of an ERP system or be integrated into one. Since accounting can be very cumbersome and complex, accounting programs help companies to always have all finances in view, which allows serious errors like incorrect bookings to be identified and corrected more quickly. As a result, problems with financial authorities can often be avoided before they arise. Among the greatest advantages of the software are possible cost and time savings.