Meet Ramp Travel: Smarter business travel, from booking to book close

Business travel is back in full force. As a distributed workforce looks to get together in person, airline expenses alone have skyrocketed 34% in just the past year.

But innovation hasn't caught up to the demand. Many companies still don’t have an effective way to manage travel. Traditional travel management platforms are expensive, with higher prices and extra fees (up to $35 per trip). Plus, employees dislike using these outdated tools, making adoption and compliance an uphill battle for the finance team. While consumer booking sites might be cheaper and easier to use, they lack controls to enforce travel policies. No matter which option you choose, every trip still ends with employees wasting hours on manual expense reports.

But these tradeoffs don’t need to exist. Companies deserve total control over their travel spend without being saddled with fees. And their employees deserve a delightful booking experience without the additional work.

That’s why we built Ramp Travel. Employees can now book flights and hotels directly on the Ramp platform at industry-low rates—and finance teams can automatically enforce customizable travel policies before takeoff. One solution to book trips, manage expenses, reconcile the books, and more. We’re excited to partner with Priceline, the leading supplier of cost-effective travel options, to offer employees great choices and flexibility for flights and hotels.

See the difference for yourself with this product tour from our CEO and Co-founder, Eric Glyman:

Set digital travel policies to catch out-of-policy travel spend—before trips even start

Too many businesses still use static travel policy PDFs that no one can ever find, much less remember what they say. In contrast, Ramp Travel helps you build customized travel policies directly into your company’s booking process and corporate cards. They function as powerful controls that actively guide employees’ spending at every stage of their trip so your team members can’t help but stay in compliance.

Using Ramp Travel, finance teams can create travel policies that:

• Approve trips before booking. Route spend requests to different approvers depending on the team and amount. ‍
• Dynamically adjust airfares and hotel maximums using market rates for a given route, or set fixed amounts.
• ‍Block out-of-policy bookings from going through until they receive additional approval.
• Require advanced reservations, for example, at least two weeks before the start of the trip.
• Ensure proper airline cabin classes based on flight length.
• Trigger alerts for excessive per diem spending. Ramp can also automatically flag unusual expenses like weekend spending or excessive tipping, and help employees pay back unapproved expenses.
  

With these controls in place, Ramp Travel helps prevent out-of-policy spending before employees even leave for their trips.

Give employees low rates, rewards, and an intuitive booking experience

Business travel costs shoot up when employees spend hours planning their trips, researching flight schedules and hotel locations, and comparing prices. That’s why we designed Ramp Travel to work like the best consumer tools, with flights and hotels in one place, including low-cost deals from Priceline not available on consumer sites.

What’s more, employees can instantly see what options are in policy, so they never have to worry about exceeding budgets. You can further incentivize them to book hotels with the lowest rates by sharing a percentage of the savings through gift cards.

With zero platform fees, no matter how many users or booked trips, Ramp Travel helps companies save.

Ramp Travel is so easy to use that beta customers like data encryption company Virtru saw their employees booking trips on their own, without needing any training at all. The platform had their favorite airlines and hotel brands, and saved essential details like mileage membership to speed up future bookings. People simply used Ramp to update or cancel their bookings if schedules changed. Soon, teams will be able to create group bookings, so everyone headed to the same offsite or conference can book flights and hotels together, using a shared budget. Managers will also be able to designate delegates to book and manage their travel on their behalf.

Let Ramp do your employees’ travel expenses to save them even more time

We built Ramp Travel into Ramp because your employees and finance team shouldn’t have to use multiple tools to manage travel. Give them a single tool to streamline every aspect of travel, from bookings to book close. After trips, employees are no longer buried under receipts and expense reports—because with Ramp Travel, their expenses are automatically done.

Receipts for flights and hotels are automatically generated and attached to trips in Ramp for faster reporting. Ramp’s integrations with Uber for Business, Lyft, and other services like Gmail and Outlook help automate even more receipt submissions. Expenses incurred throughout the trip are automatically scanned for compliance, coded, and allocated to the corresponding trip in real time to keep per diems on track. All of these features work together to help employees spend less time on expenses and more time on their jobs.

Speed up your close and keep your T&E on track

By automating so many aspects of expense management for your employees, Ramp helps ensure lengthy month-end closes are a thing of the past. More importantly, finance teams can now actively manage their company’s travel budget in real time. If T&E for the month threatens to exceed budget, they can immediately adjust policies or approval workflows to rein in spending.

No matter what booking tool you use, Ramp can help your accounting team reconcile their books faster by auto-coding expenses based on past transaction patterns and flagging non-compliant ones that need review. Our integrations help sync transactions to your accounting provider with one click.

With T&E expenses representing ~20% of companies’ annual spend on Ramp cards these days, Ramp Travel turns T&E from a black box of spend into a wealth of information for smarter budgeting.

Accelerate all finance operations with Ramp—including travel

Businesses deserve tools that push the boundaries of what's possible to help them stay at the top of their industry. Now, you can use Ramp to manage employee travel, control expenses, pay bills, automate accounting, and more. Ramp Travel gives you the complete package for your business travel program: effective controls, low rates, deep visibility, and a hassle-free booking experience for your entire company.

Ramp Travel is now available for all customers. If you’re already on Ramp, sign in and give it a try. For a guided demo, join our webinar next week, where you can ask questions live.

Not yet on Ramp? Sign up for free today and see how we can help you modernize your finance function.