Unmanaged Travel
Unmanaged travel refers to when a company does not have a program or tool set in place for booking business travel. This often results in employees booking independently and managing their own travel arrangements.
Why does unmanaged travel matter?
Unmanaged travel might make sense at a small organization that’s just getting its feet wet with all aspects of running a business, not just travel. However, unmanaged travel comes with issues that you should address sooner rather than later.
Factors to consider for Unmanaged Travel
For starters, unmanaged travel leads to higher costs in the long run since your travelers are booking what they want with no guidance or oversight. This lack of support also leads to loss of productivity since employees are often stuck clicking through browser tabs to compare options across sites instead of getting the inventory they need, when they need it. From a travel management perspective, unmanaged travel means the finance team has absolutely no visibility into spend until travelers submit post-trip expense reports, which can often take weeks or even months after a trip has taken place — way too late to control for costs that a managed program would have helped address proactively.
