The Importance of the Self-Booking Tool

Since the pandemic, the importance of the self-booking tool cannot be overstated. Prior to Covid-19, most Travel Management Companies offered a self-booking tool and whilst many adopted this method of booking travel, offline bookings were still a major focus. Flash forward to the middle of 2022 and the travel landscape is much different than it was pre-pandemic. The cost-of-living crisis, strikes, staff shortages, and operational issues have all had a major impact on the travel industry. A self-booking tool can help curb some of these issues and get your business back to travelling again.

Why Use a Self-Booking Tool?

1. Save Time

Just like the rest of the travel industry, we are currently experiencing high demand for bookings as well as delays, disruptions, cancellations, and schedule changes like never before. Using our self-booking tool to make your own travel arrangements can save time as you will not have to wait on one of our team members getting back to your quotation request. Book flights, hotels, car hire and rail tickets instantly at the push of a button.

2. Convenience

With Selective Travel Management’s self-booking tool, you can book travel at a time and place that suits you. While offline bookings are made during office hours only, online bookings can be made 24/7 with no time constraints to make a booking. You can even make a booking on the go using a mobile or tablet device.

3. Less Expensive

The cost of making a booking via a self-booking tool can be cheaper than making a booking offline. This is because it takes less resource and time for the TMC, often resulting in cheaper fees. On top of this, clients can access the same fare content and corporate rates as our travel consultants within the platform.

4. Travel Policy Compliance

Our self-booking tool can be tailored for your travel requirements. Your travel policy can be built into the platform ensuring compliance on all bookings as well as approval processes, workflows, and restrictions set in place. This can also help save money as price thresholds can be set for flights and hotels, ensuring none of your budget goes to waste.  

5. Duty of Care

Our self-booking tool can help meet your duty of care policy with pre-approval processes, ensuring all trips are safe and risk-free before bookings are made. Our self-booking tool has varying levels of access for travellers, arrangers, approvers and more. Linked with our Traveller Tracking system, you can pinpoint the location of your travellers anywhere in the world at any given time.

6. Reporting

Interested in monitoring your travel spend? Our self-booking platform is linked with our Online Reporting Tool (Trends) so you can see an overview of your travel bookings, reports, expenses and more. Our online suite of technology allows you to take your travel programme into your own hands.

If you do not have access to our Online Booking Tool and are interested in going online, please speak to your Account Manager for more information. 

If you would like to have your Business Travel Simplified, then speak with a member of our team on (028) 9038 9007 or email hello@selective-travel.co.uk