Keep business travel costs low

Keep Business Travel Costs Low As more employees get back on the road

This document (and any information accessed through links in this document) is provided for general information purposes only, does not constitute legal or other professional advice, and may not be quoted or referred to by any third party without the prior written consent of Gett. Changes in circumstances may impact the accuracy and validity of the information contained in this document. Legal or other professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from any action as a result of the contents of this document. © Gett July 2021 – All rights reserved 2

What’s in this guide 5 Back to business travel 6 How to save money on business travel 7 Top strategies for saving on business travel 13 How to save on every mode of travel

With the return to business travel, your travel costs are starting to tick back up. To remain competitive, you need to get your people back on the road. Seeing customers and clients face- to-face remains a pinnacle of top tier service, and there are so many projects that still can’t be achieved fully online. Meaning many deals will end up not happening if not for in-person meetings. But you don’t want these rising travel costs to spiral out of control, as cashflow has become more important for many businesses than ever before. Whether your company plans to travel more or less than your pre-pandemic levels, you want to save money. In this guide, we show you several important ways to lower your travel costs, both per trip and through operational efficiencies. 4

As early as April 2021, the mass return to travel started. In the US, there was a 48.9% increase in motor fuel sales when compared to April of 2020. And in the UK, April 2020 road travel fell to 1955 levels, but in May of 2021, the UK led the world in post-vaccination hotel bookings , which brought back clogged-up roads. Travel is predicted to make steady gains to pre- pandemic levels over the next few years, with both tourism and travel for business-related meetings and events predicted to meet previous levels in 2023. Between 2021 and 2025, the global business travel market is expected to grow by over one trillion USD at a rate of over 23%. That’s a positive sign for businesses who rely on travel to grow, but travel tends to be one of the top five expenses at any organization, so there’s plenty of room to keep travel costs low as the need and desire to travel comes back. Back to business travel 5

Next, we’ll dive deeper into how to implement travel spend control, operations, and purchases. Better control Accurate and abided-by travel policies can have a massive impact on cost. A travel policy shouldn’t be something that’s applied to the entire company, but rather customizable for different seniority levels, departments, teams, individuals, and purposes. How to save money on business travel While tips abound, there are really only three main ways to save money on business travel, and we’ll cover all of them. At the root, these are the things you need to tackle: Quicker processes When you save time on travel approvals, reimbursements, and travel-related expense reporting, your company will save money by directing employee time elsewhere. Lower prices And of course, you want to pay less per trip. You should use travel platforms that allow you to compare multiple prices in one place. 6

To p strategies for saving on business travel Saving money on business travel is about more than skipping the mini bar. You may find you need a complete upheaval of old- school processes so you can get improved transparency, control, and trip options. 7

Set travel policies for groups and individuals Let’s begin with travel policies. We’re not talking about a stuffy document that gets shared during the first week of employee onboarding, only for no one to really read it. Rather, thanks to technology, your travel policies should now be built inside of the travel booking platforms that you use so that they control decisions at the time of booking. You also hide out-of-policy options so travelers can’t even see them. Cars and encouraging walking and public transport Setting policies with Gett Gett, a global platform solution built for corporate ground transportation, offers customizable policies designed for the nature of car travel. That means measures like not allowing taxi travel locally for junior 10׳ miles, and encouraging walking for short trips. Policies can be customized by individual, team, office, department, location, even time of day so that the rules truly do fit your need. Trains, planes, and hotels Setting policies with TravelPerk Our partner TravelPerk specializes in hotel, flight, and train booking. You can create unique policies for individuals, groups, teams, projects, and more. One of the more useful features is the dynamic budget setting. For example, you can have a dynamic budget to allow hotel bookings 20% higher than the city average. This way, you don’t have to set individual budgets for every city in the world. 8

Use travel policies to solve spending problems The best way to get results from your travel policies is to use them to solve real problems. For example, let’s say that you’re concerned that executives are spending too much on taxis. You don’t want to eliminate this perk, you just want to curb the costs. You could set a policy to allow premium cabs for trips 15 miles and under. But any trip over 15 miles would need to be taken with a ride-hailing option, like Ola or Lyft. Or maybe you want to offer work-to-home car service for senior employees only. While all other employees can take a taxi to a public transportation stop, and then need to ride public transit home. You could put that policy into effect, but allow for work- to-home taxis for all employees regardless of status if it is after 7pm, so that you ensure the safety of employees who stay at work late. Discover and re-educate worst offenders With accurate travel policies in effect, it’s a lot easier to find occasional infractions and worst offenders. If your policy is still a dusty document that applies to the whole organization, it’s nearly impossible to enforce. But when it really fits the nature of travel at your company, you can more easily spot issues. Of course, you’ll need to be using business-ready booking platforms like Gett and TravelPerk to get this data. Someone can only “break the rules” if your policy allows—meaning that they can see the policy but still choose to book outside of it. If you do permit out-of-policy bookings, having a booking platform means you’ll be able to see them. Plus, with modern business travel tools on your side, you can also review travel spend analytics and find out who’s spending a lot of money. Are certain teams, departments, or individuals overdoing it? Re- educate them on why cost efficiency is important, and consider making specific travel policies to address the problem. 9

Think end-to-end: Integrate travel booking with your expense management From an operational standpoint, business travel is often needlessly complicated. Companies and travellers book across dozens of sites and hundreds of reimbursement requests per month. Without effective (and integrated) systems in place, there’s a ton of manual work to sift through. Save money by saving time. Integrate your travel booking tools with your expense management system. For example, Gett integrates with Concur so you can automatically pull in all of your ground- travel related expenses without requiring travelers or finance managers to input them. This creates a better employee experience for those who travel to help grow your business, and frees up a lot of time for more important financial initiatives. TravelPerk integrates with Expensify, Payhawk, and ExpenseIn so you can bring your travel spending into your favorite expense management tool. Get rid of old-school reimbursement processes in favor of consolidated invoicing The average expense claim takes 20 minutes to process , and an extra 18 minutes if there are errors (which 19% of claims contain). Because time is money, expense reports cost £25.71 on average to process. Thankfully, there is a way to save time both for the employees doing the traveling and the ones processing their receipts and reports. Consolidated invoicing is the easiest way to streamline operations when it comes to travel. When your employees use a single platform to hire cars, you receive one monthly invoice instead of dozens (or hundreds) of receipts and reimbursement requests. The same is true when you use one provider for flights, hotels, and trains. 10

Create green travel practices Offsetting CO2 emissions is an important endeavor for all modern companies. But tree-planting and tree-protecting initiatives will only get us so far. Every company and individual also needs to be more mindful of how much CO2 they’re putting into the atmosphere in the first place. Sometimes, what’s good for the earth is also good for the budget, and this is often the case with travel. Here are three green travel policies you can put into effect: Walking under a certain distance With Gett, you can set up a travel policy that encourages or requires employees to walk for trips under a certain distance. And of course, you can set individual policies to allow cars for all distances for people with disabilities. Trains over planes Using a travel management platform like TravelPerk, you can encourage or require travelers to book trains instead of planes for certain distances, as trains emit less CO2 per person per trip. Carpooling when available One of Gett’s more advanced features for large companies is carpooling. When hiring a car, employees can be required to hop in a carpool if someone from your company is already headed in a similar direction. Once the policy is set up, putting it into effect is easy and automatic. 11

Review detailed analytics of all bookings Booking travel in consolidated platforms also offers unprecedented transparency. When it comes to spend-related concerns, 57% of companies say that lack of visibility tops them all, according to research by Aberdeen. With consolidated spending, you can login at any time and get detailed analytics into which groups, individuals, and teams are spending the most. If you have a flexible travel policy which allows bookings outside of policy, you can also discover who books outside of it most frequently and figure out why. UK Based? Recover as much VAT as possible Most organizations don’t have effective VAT reclaiming systems in place. The UK is gradually raising VAT rates on business travel back to pre- pandemic levels, meaning that it’s even more important to recover what you can. TravelPerk automatically collects VAT-ready invoices for planes, and offers a VAT invoice collection service for hotel bookings. A VAT account manager will declare the amounts and get reimbursements for any doubled- up payments or overages. 12

How to save money on business travel Below, we’ve gathered up our top strategies for every mode of travel, so you can make sure you’re using all available technology and tips. Rely on Gett to save on car travel and to encourage walking or public transportation. Use TravelPerk to save on trains, planes, and hotels. 13

Cars Price transparency Use a consolidated booking platform to view prices from multiple vendors in one place, compare prices, and choose the best. Pay no commissions Book with a consolidated platform built for businesses, so you can avoid commissions from hotel concierges and booking services. Instead, pay a low platform fee. Carpooling Use carpooling features to reduce the need for separate cars when employees are traveling near and around the office. Location-based policies Use geo-location to create the right travel policies. Maybe employees can’t hire cars locally, or local travel can only occur from the office to nearby public transit stations. Seniority-based policies Give executives and senior leaders a unique set of policies to allow for nicer cars for short distances, or work-to-home travel. Time-based policies Allow work-to-home travel after dark so employees can get home safely without having to walk or use public transportation. Car-type policies Make sure that only senior executives are using black taxis, but not for long distances. Walking and public transportation Require walking for short distances For employees without physical disabilities, require walking for certain distances, we suggest half a mile. Location-based policies Create location-based policies to disallow local car travel for most employees, and instead require walking or public transportation. Corporate cards and easy expense reporting Consolidate invoicing and get rid of the need for time-consuming reimbursements by allowing travelers to book with a corporate card that integrates directly with your accounting system. Or, use an expensing tool that automatically turns receipts into expense reports so travelers don’t have to spend time manually adding the data. 14

Trains Route-based policies Trains are generally a good buy, but you can set up policies for maximum costs, and require flights for long distances. Seniority-based policies You can allow senior leaders and executives to purchase more comfortable seats. Team or purpose-based policies Use groups to create policies for certain teams or purposes, like sales or hiring. Planes Route-based policies Set a maximum allowable cost for certain routes or use dynamic policies to eliminate overly expensive air travel (unless approved for an urgent reason). Booking in advance Get better prices by requiring employees to seek approval for trips booked fewer than 3 weeks in advance. Seniority-based policies Offer executives higher maximums so they can take direct flights, or allow them to purchase business class tickets. Team or purpose-based policies Create special policies for certain purposes, such as hiring, and allow candidates to book for themselves within policy. 15

Hotels Location-based policies Use dynamic policies to allow employees to book a bit higher than the average night per stay in any city. Create per-city policies for popular destinations. Booking in advance Require that bookings not made 2 or 3 weeks in advance get approval to reduce unnecessarily costly spend. Seniority-based policies Allow for senior executives to book better rooms with a higher amount above the average nightly rate in a given city. Team- or purpose-based policies Allow employees who travel for urgent purposes to book what they need when they need it. With manual booking and accounting processes, your company lacks cost-savings opportunities because you can’t control or optimize your operations. With the right technology and approach, you can get back to traveling with a lower budget than before. 16

Save on car travel with Gett Gett brings together taxis, ride-hailing options, traditional, fleets, and even limousines onto one, easy-to-use platform. The result for companies is reduced time, costs, and hassle. How? Because the Gett platform brings you all this*: Travel policies Price comparisons Seamless expensing Advanced permissions Smart invoicing Third-party integrations Green options And more *where available Save on trains, planes, and hotels with TravelPerk Make it easy for travelers to book what they want within policy, and get better control, transparency, and savings. TravelPerk is built for managing domestic and international travel. TravelPerk offers: Travel policies Large travel inventory Seamless expensing Consolidated invoicing Third-party integrations Carbon offsetting And more 17