By Brian Veloso, Managing Director at SAP Concur Canada
Employees want to travel to expand their network and skills. Leaders want employees to travel to engage prospects, develop intercultural capabilities and resilience, as well as build relationships. Business travel seems to benefit everyone involved; what could possibly ground it?
It often comes down to the usual suspect: budget. Or lack thereof. During economic uncertainty, Canadian finance heads face a strict mandate to balance cost control with long-term growth, particularly amid lingering inflation and high travel costs. That’s despite 83 per cent of Canadian business travellers agreeing that corporate travel is worthwhile to achieve business goals. With spending on corporate travel and meetings in Canada projected to reach $40.1 billion CAD in 2026, managing these investments effectively has become a board-level priority.
Crossing business trips off the P&L (profit & loss) might deliver short-term savings, but short-term savings won’t grow the business. Expanding market knowledge, identifying new revenue streams, and deepening working relationships are critical, particularly within global and cross provincial distributed enterprises.
Leaders must balance efficiency and effectiveness to deliver a high-ROI corporate travel programme – the kind that catalyses productivity, skill development, and talent retention. Here are three ways to walk the line between cost and value.
1. Identify high-value travel and cut low-value spend
Not all business travel is created equal. To deliver an efficient programme, organizations must audit travel patterns, quantify the ROI associated with each trip, and categories it by value. This helps decision-makers eliminate low-value travel and reallocate budgets to high-value engagements.
To secure finance’s buy-in, all trips should be mapped to a clear, tangible business objective. Consider dividing them into operational duties, such as inspecting a new supply chain partner or delivering training, and strategic duties, like negotiating terms for an acquisition or pitching to a prospective client.
The most valuable travel happens when colleagues with limited face time get to build their relationships by collaborating on real work. This is particularly relevant in Canada, where corporate travel is increasingly combined with leisure — 60 per cent of Canadian travellers now extend business trips for personal time (a trend known as ‘bleisure’) to maximize trip value.
2. Establish decision-influencers at all levels
Travel policies are traditionally set by decision-makers across HR, finance, travel managers, and procurement. But top-down mandates can result in senior partners shaping policy around what motivates them, rather than the employees who will be most affected.
Organisations can bridge this gap by establishing a small advisory group – a secondary, “next-generation board” – that provides decision makers with fresh input, challenge and feedback as well as increases the legitimacy of their decisions with other generations.
This has the dual effect of ensuring that travel policies are built around the values of multiple levels of the organisation, and establishing champions for the programme who hold influence throughout the business.
I’ve seen the cross-industry value firsthand. Consider a large enterprise or professional services firm that establishes a next-gen advisory board: traditional travel and benefit perks are often designed by senior executives to reflect what they appreciate, which may not align with what younger employees value today.
Setting up a next-generation board is particularly valuable in enterprises where the generational gap is wide. It helps engage younger workers – who are statistically more likely to churn in the early years of their careers – and ensure travel opportunities deliver value for both professional development and business development.
3. Model good travel in your leadership team
Watching experienced leaders work, visiting new markets, and collaborating with colleagues from different backgrounds provide practical opportunities for employees to learn. But costs can spiral when business trips are framed as staff entertainment rather than investments in people and process.
Put simply, executives will struggle to enforce discipline on the road if they don’t exhibit it themselves.
When leaders share learnings from their trips, spend sensibly, and demonstrate where new opportunities and efficiencies have been created, they set the organizational standard. As leaders, we need to lead by example, stimulate the workforce, and inspire our teams. When employees see executives travelling efficiently and effectively, it sets a clear standard for the entire organisation.
Business travel is a valuable tool in any organization’s arsenal – and a lifeline for global, distributed enterprises. Leaders can balance travel cost and value by prioritizing high-value engagements, crafting policy alongside employees, and modelling best practices to maximize ROI. That’s how you secure travel’s spot in your ledger now and for the future.
