09/10/2024

Companies Need to Focus on Best Practices, Maximize Rewards as Corporate Travel Bookings Rise

Citizens partners with Navan to help corporate clients make the most of business travel

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Travel bookings at mid-size companies have increased 33 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels, creating increased urgency for business leaders to leverage best travel practices and maximize rewards offered by corporate card providers.

Higher costs are another key dynamic today as a record summer travel season shows little sign of slowing down. Flight and accommodation costs have dipped slightly from mid-2022 peaks but have settled at a higher level than pre-pandemic. With stable demand from both business and leisure travelers, and elevated labor costs, it appears likely that higher travel prices will persist.

“Business travel continues to evolve, adding to the complexities facing mid-size businesses that aim to manage travel strategically and efficiently,” said Rodrigo Sanchez, head of commercial card solutions at Citizens. “We have partnered with travel and expense technology provider Navan to offer a holistic travel management platform to Citizens’ clients. By pairing the use of corporate cards with the latest travel management technology, companies have more control over their expenses and can get the maximum benefit from their travel spend.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Citizens, one of the largest regional banks in the United States,” said Michael Sindicich, CEO of Navan Expense. “Like Navan, Citizens has a storied history of leveraging innovation to solve customer pain points. The new co-branded travel and expense platform is designed specifically for Citizens, offering its commercial card customers a T&E solution with the modern experience they have come to expect.”

Navan has seen three major trends surface in post-pandemic business travel:

  • An increase in group travel as teams whose members work remotely seek opportunities to meet and collaborate;
  • An increase in employees tacking on leisure trips before or after work travel, a trend that has been dubbed “bleisure;”
  • And a shift in the makeup of business travelers as more engineers and marketers take business trips.

The good news is that by implementing best travel practices and leveraging new digital tools, companies can gain greater insight into these changes and manage them more effectively while also reaping maximum rewards.

Best company travel practices include:

  • Adopting dynamic travel policies: The old approach usually places static policies on business travel, such as price ceilings for flights or hotels. Dynamic policies use current market conditions to set policy guidelines for each transaction. Travel costs can be seasonable and varied. A dynamic policy takes prevailing conditions into account, allowing for higher price limits in busy times and lower price limits in slow times. With these interactive guardrails in place, employees may have more and better choices when it comes to booking travel.
  • Using corporate cards to connect policy, capture useful travel data and get rewards: Corporate cards allow for another layer of policy control. Cards can be linked to specific transaction limits, location specifications or other parameters to put corporate policy into effect with each booking. Cards can also generate useful expense data in real time and mid-size companies may also benefit from the cashback rewards offered by many corporate card programs.
  • Leveraging end-to-end technology to connect policy with the booking process: Dynamic policies are only possible when you have the right supporting technology. Companies can capture several benefits from a travel platform that uses their dynamic policies for each transaction.
  • Negotiating pricing can also help companies manage rising costs: Better data makes it easier for companies to identify trends and make the case for preferred pricing with targeted travel providers.

“Citizens is focused on innovation and working with companies that are improving every aspect of our customers’ lives, including travel,” said Mark Lehmann, CEO of Citizens JMP. “Technology isn’t just an industry specialty for us. Technological innovation impacts a wide range of industries and we are dedicated to helping our clients seize every advantage that it can offer.”

For more on best travel practices, please click here.

About Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, with $219.9 billion in assets as of June 30, 2024. Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, Citizens offers a broad range of retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, large corporations and institutions. Citizens helps its customers reach their potential by listening to them and by understanding their needs in order to offer tailored advice, ideas and solutions. In Consumer Banking, Citizens provides an integrated experience that includes mobile and online banking, a full-service customer contact center and the convenience of approximately 3,300 ATMs and approximately 1,000 branches in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Consumer Banking products and services include a full range of banking, lending, savings, wealth management and small business offerings. In Commercial Banking, Citizens offers a broad complement of financial products and solutions, including lending and leasing, deposit and treasury management services, foreign exchange, interest rate and commodity risk management solutions, as well as loan syndication, corporate finance, merger and acquisition, and debt and equity capital markets capabilities. More information is available at www.citizensbank.com or visit us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn or Facebook.