How to add a travel benefit alongside your travel management company

If your company already uses a travel management company, you can still give employees a travel benefit, and you don't have to switch. The two do different jobs. The agency books business trips. A travel benefit covers the trips employees pay for themselves. As long as the benefit stays on personal travel, not one business trip is booked any differently.

Is it worth doing? In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 5,188 US workers, 46% of those who get paid time off said they take less than they're offered. Their top reasons were not feeling they needed more time (52%) and worrying about falling behind at work (49%). A discount won't change either of those. What a benefit does is make the trips people do take cheaper, without the company paying for them.

This guide covers the two ways to set one up, what to check before you let it near business travel, and a 90-day launch plan.

A travel benefit and a travel agency do different jobs

Your travel management company books business trips. It applies your travel policy, handles approvals, sends one invoice, reports on spend and keeps track of where your travelers are.

A travel benefit is for the trips employees pay for themselves: a family vacation, a long weekend, a wedding across the country. Employees get lower rates and rewards, and the company doesn't pay for the trip.

They only overlap if you choose to let the benefit handle some business travel too. So the first decision is how far you want it to reach.

Option 1: limit the benefit to personal travel

This is the simplest launch, and your agency contract usually doesn't come into it, though it's worth checking that it only covers business travel. Employees sign up, book their own trips at member rates and earn rewards. Nothing changes about how business trips are booked.

Three things to settle before you announce it:

• Who can join. Every employee, or family members too.
• What the company sees. This decides whether people use it. Employees won't book a family vacation through a tool they think their employer can look into. Ask the provider whether anyone at the company, including admins, can ever see a personal booking, and put the answer in your announcement.
• How people hear about it. A benefit nobody remembers doesn't get used. Put it in onboarding, the benefits portal and the email that goes out before summer and the holidays.

Option 2: include some business travel too

Some companies go further and let the benefit handle part of their business travel, such as hotels only, one team or the trips their agency serves poorly. That can save money, but it touches your agency contract and your travel policy, so check five things first.

1. Your agency contract. Look for an exclusivity clause, minimum booking volumes and fees that rise if volume falls. These decide whether moving bookings away from the agency triggers fees.
2. Knowing where people are. Whoever tracks travelers in an emergency needs itineraries from both tools, in one place. Ask each provider how itineraries reach them: an automatic feed, a regular export or forwarded confirmation emails. Agree on it before the first booking.
3. One travel policy. Set the same nightly limits, cabin rules and approval steps in both tools, or travelers will book wherever the rules are looser.
4. One expense process. Bookings from both tools should land in the same expense system, so finance reconciles one way.
5. One set of reports. Spend and emissions need combining across both tools. The questions in our travel supplier climate questionnaire work for a booking platform as well as for your agency.

Here's how the two options compare:

Reward employees for booking under budget

A benefit that runs alongside business travel can also reward good booking decisions. One common approach is to give employees a share of the saving when they book a comparable option under a set benchmark.

That only saves money if the benchmark is set right, and it raises questions about hotel points and tax. Our guide to rewarding employees for saving on business travel covers how to set it up.

How Dyme fits alongside a travel agency

Dyme works as a personal travel benefit, a business travel tool, or both at once. Through distribution deals with benefits platforms, it is available to more than 10 million US employees. For companies running it themselves, Dyme for Business is free for teams of up to 100.

• Setup. Sign-in through Google, Microsoft or Okta. Employee lists sync from Rippling, Workday or BambooHR. Most teams are live in a day.
• Personal trips stay personal. Nobody at the company can see an employee's personal trips, admins included. A work booking can't be switched to personal to get around policy either.
• Expense. Business bookings export as a CSV file you can load into Expensify, Ramp or Brex.
• Rewards. Every business trip earns Dyme Miles in the employee's personal account, and employees spend them on their own travel.

Part of what Dyme earns on each booking funds new solar for schools and hospitals.

A sample announcement to launch your travel benefit

Answer the three questions employees will ask: what it costs them, who sees their bookings, and whether business travel changes. Here's an announcement for a Dyme launch that does. Swap in your own details:

From [date], every [Company] employee can book hotels and flights for their own trips through Dyme at member rates: vacations, weekends away, family visits. Sign up with your work email at [link].

Nobody at [Company] can see your personal bookings. Every booking earns Dyme Miles you can spend on future travel, and part of what Dyme earns helps fund solar on schools and hospitals. Business travel still goes through [your travel agency], as it does today.

A launch plan for the first 90 days

1. Weeks 1 and 2. Read your agency contract and decide the scope: personal travel only, or some business travel too. If you include business travel, agree how itineraries reach whoever tracks travelers.
2. Weeks 3 and 4. Connect sign-in and your employee list (on Dyme, most teams do this in a day), set the policy for any business travel, and brief managers.
3. Launch. Announce it with one real example, such as what a long weekend costs with and without the member rate.
4. Day 90. Check sign-ups, bookings, and the questions HR received. If you moved some business travel over, compare its average hotel cost with your agency's for the same cities.