Save Money on Flights, Hotels, and More with These Business Trip Tips
For a startup, business trips can provide great opportunities to get your product or service in front of potential investors.
But, frequent travel can be very costly. If you want to learn how to make your business travel more affordable, keep reading.
Use airline-branded credit cards and other rewards cards
If you travel on one main airline for most of your trips, signing up for an airline-branded business credit card is a smart move. You’ll rack up points that can be used on your trips and most of those cards come with generous sign-up bonuses.
Don’t ignore non-airline specific cards, either. Products like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card also offer excellent sign-up bonuses regularly, as long as you meet a certain minimum spend.
Once you have the card keep track of your miles using a service like AwardWallet to see how close you are to a free or heavily discounted flight.
Setup flight alerts and monitor fares
If you regularly travel to and from the same airports, you should set price alerts for different timeframes to keep an eye on any deals that pop up. The following sites all have fantastic search capabilities:
You can also set a reminder for yourself to check in with discount airfare aggregators like TheFlightDeal.com. The site posts new deals every day, and you may find surprisingly low airfare for some of your routes.
Look beyond hotels for your accommodations
Hotels are great, but they can also be very expensive.
Airbnb allows business owners to search for properties for their work-related trips, and is one great option. You can also use hotel deal finding sites to save:
Hipmunk is another useful website to keep on your radar, since it even searches Airbnb schedules (it’s also helpful when planning flights and rental cars.)
Use a virtual assistant to keep things running smoothly while you’re on the road
There’s no doubt about it — business travel, while necessary, can also be stressful. At a startup, where things tend to move quickly, the idea of taking time out for travel can sound downright frightening.
A virtual assistant can save you time, money, and stress by making sure the business continues operating successfully while you’re in the air, at a meeting, or anywhere in between. They can respond to customer inquiries immediately, manage your email, monitor social media accounts, and anything else you need help with.
Get smart about parking and transportation
Airport parking can eat up a massive chunk of your budget, but new solutions are available for travelers that will help save money:
FlightCar lets you share your car while you’re away. If someone rents your car, you’ll even make some extra money. But no matter what, you’ll get free parking and a car wash.
TheParkingSpot is an off-property parking service, and the lots are generally located away from the main airport parking. Fees are incredibly reasonable and there’s a free shuttle that will get you to and from the airport.
Beyond parking, you can also cut other transportation costs. Local transport like buses and trains will be much more affordable than taxis, and ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft are popular throughout the world. You can save even more money by offering to carpool with other riders using the Uberpool and Lyft Line features.
Even if you only use one or two of these tips, you’re bound to save money on your business travel. If you use all of the tips together, you’ll save even more, and you can put that money saved to work for your business.
