Business travel is becoming costlier with each passing day. Business travel expenses such as flight, accommodation and car rentals all add up quickly especially if you are not careful and put a big dent on your wallet. Newly established startup or small businesses can not afford to pay for business trip. That is the reason why they resort to other alternatives such as video conferencing.
Even if they want to go on a business trip, they would either have to cut corners somewhere else to make way for business travel or they will have to consider the return on investment. In this article, you will learn how to calculate the travel ROI and how to boost sales travel ROI for your business.
How to Calculate the Travel ROI?
You can easily calculate the travel ROI by looking at inputs and outputs. Remember that if you are not going to get something out of your business trip then, it is not a viable option. Even if you are going on a business trip, make sure that you have other clients and business stakeholders in the city so you can schedule business meetings with them when you are free from other business activities.
If you have many clients who are not satisfied, the business trip is more than worth it. It gives you an opportunity to convince them and resolve their problems and make them feel that they are important for your business. Instead of calculating the total cost of your business trip, you should calculate travel cost per employee, potential sales outcome and opportunities to build relationships. In short, your goal should be to keep the business travel cost as low as possible while maximizing the impact.
1. Reduce Overnight Stays
Just like any other aspect of business travel, cost of accommodation has risen over the past few years. This has resulted in making business trips more expensive. You can easily overcome this issue by avoiding overnight stays, as hotels tend to change more for overnight stays. The more nights you stay in the hotel the more you will have to pay for it. The best time to travel is 6 am early morning or at 11 pm late in the night. This will help you maximize the time on ground (more on that later).
Another useful tip for saving more money on hotel accommodations is to book your room weeks if not months in advance. The earlier you book, the lesser you will have to pay for hotel bookings. You can also consider joining an airline business travel program. This can help you save a lot of money while you are on your business trip. This offers you more opportunity to maximize your business return on investment.
2. Make The Most of Time
Time is money. Whether you are on a business trip or not, you should not waste it. Let’s say, you are flying to meet a client at 2 pm in the afternoon, you should not waste the entire morning and some part of the afternoon. Use that time efficiently by knowing more about clients or meet other clients in the vicinity. Use LinkedIn to look for connection opportunities. You never know, you will be able to get new clients in the process. Why I am putting so much emphasis on LinkedIn? According to Sales and LinkedIn study, 84% of LinkedIn users say they have succeeded in creating a business opportunity from the professional networking website and 79% of them belong to small businesses.
3. Choose a Home Base
If you are traveling to a metropolitan city to attend business meetings, moving from one place to another can take its toll on you. Not only is it time consuming due to traffic congestion but it is also expensive and exhausting at the same time. Instead, you should think about establishing a home base near your client’s office.
You can also consider a coffee shop, yacht rental in Dubai or community workspace to get work done during your down time. You can invite contacts to join you at your place instead of going to them, especially if they are located near your location. You don’t want to be spending a small fortune on transportation. Accommodation booking apps like Airbnb, can help you find the right accommodation at a fraction of the cost and also feel right at home.
How do you boost your return on investment and justify the spending on your business trips? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.
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