How To Control Costs As Travel Prices Increase

It’s probably not news to you: the prices for most things, especially travel, are increasing. The price for a gallon of gas is higher than ever, and it’s hard to look at the rate for a single night in a hotel without wondering, “when did this get so expensive?”

The average price for a gallon of unleaded gas was $5.01 in the middle of June, an increase of 63% from the $3.04 national average just a year ago. Hotel rates in the United States are on average 15% higher than in 2019. Experts are citing a continued lack of business travel, labor shortages, and inflation as explanations for the increase. The price to fly has increased, too, with airline fares rising 33.3% over the last year, according to Travel + Leisure.

It might seem impossible to control your travel-related expenses, especially hotel reservations and gas, with these price increases. We have some good news, though: CLC Lodging, America’s leading provider of corporate lodging solutions, provides businesses with workforce travel the rates, tools and insights they need to reduce travel costs.

How can my business control travel costs now?

When it comes to spending less on business travel, there are some clear  factors that contribute to the overall amount of money a company will spend to send their employees on trips. These direct costs include hotel room rates, gas prices, car and flight costs, and other contributions to the total amount spent on travel.

Indirect costs, on the other hand, are related to the time it takes to book hotels, the money lost when hotel invoices are wrong, and a lack of visibility into total lodging spend that leads to overpaying.

Here’s how traveling teams can avoid direct and indirect costs with CLC Lodging.

1. Direct savings

CLC Lodging members can instantly access pre-negotiated and discounted rates at hotels across North America, which helps companies control their direct costs on travel. Members can also customize their hotel directories by price, location and amenities, so it’s easy to book at the hotel with the lowest rate.

2. Indirect savings

Saving on hotel rates and increasing travel policy compliance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to controlling costs. To increase savings, administrators need complete visibility into employee travel. If you’re not sure how much your employees are spending on travel, there’s no way to accurately manage your overall spend. 

With our lodging portal, companies get total visibility into your lodging spend with centralized, audited billing and comprehensive insights and analysis. View hotel usage and reservation activity, plus break down reports by dates, locations, divisions and projects so you can improve your expense management and project budgeting.

We save in-house administrators time, too. With CLC Lodging, travelers can find and book hotels on their own in minutes online or with our mobile app, so your in-house teams don’t have to spend time managing travel.

Plus: Additional payment solutions

In addition to providing complete visibility into lodging spend and other indirect savings, CLC offers additional payment solutions that streamline business and travel payments and minimize reimbursement hassle: 

• The Trip Card, our virtual per diem option, allows businesses to load a fixed amount of expense money onto virtual cards for employees to use on travel-related costs like meals and fuel. With the Trip Card, travelers don’t have to worry about paying out of pocket for travel-related expenses when prices are higher than normal. Plus, businesses automatically recapture unused per diem so your dollars don’t go to waste.

• Businesses can also save and centralize their travel and office spend with our purchasing card, which CLC members can use to pay for their CLC bill and other business expenses. Qualified customers may receive special rebate offers to save even more.

Start saving on travel today. Join CLC Lodging to control your company’s spend on travel, even as the price to travel goes up - become a member for free.