These are all Top Qualities to Look for When Hiring a Corporate Travel Consultant in 2023 from ICT Catalogue.
Your company or startup can increase the ROI of business travel in several ways by having an in-house corporate travel consultant. The professional will make domestic and international business trips successful by increasing employees’ business travel experience and safety.
At the same time, he will help your organization reduce the average business travel costs by getting negotiated rates, ensuring policy compliance, and choosing the right travel products. But you can only streamline a complex process like corporate travel management by hiring the right consultant.
While shortlisting candidates, you must focus on their hard and soft skills. At the same time, you should consider a slew of essential qualities to hire a business travel consultant who helps your company consistently increase the ROI of business travel.
In this useful article guide, here are all the 9 Essential Qualities You Must Consider to Hire the Right Corporate Travel Consultant.
Travel Industry Knowledge
Industry 4.0 technologies have been transforming the travel industry consistently. Your organization can only increase the ROI of business travel by leveraging cutting-edge travel technologies. It needs a corporate travel consultant who has in-depth travel industry knowledge.
You should prioritize candidates who have worked in a reputable travel management company. Industry knowledge and experience are essential to optimize the corporate travel management process by adopting industry best practices.
Excellent Communication Skills
A corporate travel consultant has to communicate with employees to understand their travel preferences and help them overcome business travel challenges. At the same time, he has to negotiate with multiple travel suppliers to get corporate rates and discounts.
Hence, your organization needs a consultant with excellent communication skills. In addition to writing effective emails and refining policy documents, he must be able to communicate with professionals with varying demographic characteristics.
Ability to Listen Attentively
Travel choices and preferences these days vary according to employee demographics. Also, some employees need additional information and specific assistance to mitigate business travel risks. He further needs to capture essential points mentally to negotiate with suppliers successfully.
The corporate travel consultant can solve the issues or challenges employees face only by listening to them patiently and attentively. Hence, he must be able to listen attentively and carefully during internal and external interactions.
Negotiation Skills
Making travel products available at corporate rates is one of the critical responsibilities of a corporate travel consultant. The consultant has to reduce rates by negotiating with existing travel suppliers and building partnerships with new suppliers.
Hence, you should hire a candidate with good negotiation and persuasive skills. It is one of the skills that will help your company reduce average business travel costs by making employees book flights, accommodations, and other travel products at lower-than-market rates.
Administrative Skills
As a full-time employee, the corporate travel consultant will manage and administer your organization’s business travel products. Hence, administrative skills are essential for him to efficiently drive a multistep process like corporate travel management.
While shortlisting candidates, you should assess their communication, organizational, and project management skills. At the same time, you need to ensure that the candidate manages business travel programs using his time wisely.
Tech Savviness
Automation is currently one of the hottest trends in corporate travel management. Your company can implement travel and expense management software to reduce ongoing costs.
Likewise, investing in a corporate booking tool or expense management solution can simplify crucial steps in corporate travel management. Hence, your organization needs a tech-savvy corporate travel consultant.
In addition to being familiar with travel technologies, the consultant must know how to choose the right travel tech solutions. You should prioritize candidates who have already assisted in travel management software adoption and implementation.
Report Writing Skills
The corporate travel consultant will help your company help critical fiscal decisions. For instance, he has to assist your finance team in forecasting business travel costs. Likewise, he has to work with them to streamline travel expense management.
Hence, he must generate and share various reports with various teams to facilitate decision-making. The consultant can generate reports using multiple online tools and templates. But he has to customize and refine the reports to ensure stakeholders can access and analyze the required data without sacrificing extra time and effort.
Trend Tracking
Business travel trends change at frequent intervals. The travel consultant must boost the performance of business travel programs by adopting emerging trends early. That is why; your company should hire a consultant to identify trends by analyzing internal and external data.
You should prioritize candidates who detect emerging trends by interacting with industry experts and attending industry events. Also, you should check if the candidate can monitor business travel trends using digital tools.
Data Analysis
In the age of big data and intelligence technologies, your organization must leverage real-time data to increase the ROI of business travel. It becomes easier for you to make data-driven insights when the corporate travel consultant shares actionable insights gained by analyzing travel and expense data.
The consultant should conduct data analysis using robust data analytics solutions. However, he must gather the actionable insights shared by the software to facilitate informed decision-making.
Conclusion
You must consider several qualities to hire a corporate travel consultant who helps your company increase the ROI of business travel. But your organization can simply take advantage of a virtual travel consultant by implementing new-generation travel management software.
A virtual travel manager helps your organization improve business travel programs and reduce business travel costs using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. It shares actionable insights that make it easier for your company to prevent last-minute bookings, travel policy violations, and travel expense fraud.
At the same time, you can use the virtual travel consultant to identify tactics and best practices used by your competitors to increase the ROI of business travel. The AI-driven tech solution will boost the performance of the qualified corporate travel consultant by acting as a robust technical aid.