Travel policies usually guide employees on the maximum amounts which should be spent on various aspects of travel, such as hotel room rates and car hire. However, companies need to go a step further and design ways to encourage employees to spend less than is budgeted for crew travel. CrewFacilities’ President Andrea Tsakanikas discusses some tried and tested ways to make your employees active in saving company money on crew travel. Offer Them Cashbacks Companies can work with Andrea Tsakanikas to determine the approximate cost of each trip made on work-related issues. A formula can then be designed to offer employees a cashback each time they save money on a trip. For example, half of the money saved can go to the company while the other half goes to the employee as a bonus. This approach will make employees eager to spend less than was budgeted for, and all parties (the company and the employees) will be winners. Promise Upgrades or Reward Points Andrea Tsakanikas and CrewFacilities have also worked with companies where the use of reward points or promises to upgrade during subsequent trips has motivated employees to actively seek for ways to save when they travel. The reward points can be used to claim for a gift card, or the employee can upgrade to better facilities during another trip using his or her savings from the previous trip. Turn It Into a Game Who says that finding ways to save cannot be fun? Create a game around the desire to save on employee travel. For example, you can dangle an attractive reward for an employee who wins the final round of the competition to identify who has accumulated the greatest savings for the company in a given year. Such a game will increase the camaraderie between employees as they interact in the different activities associated with the competition. The employees will also be driven to find innovative ways to save each time they travel. Part of those savings can be used to fund the game while the other fraction will give a boost to your bottom line. Incentives help to create a point of convergence between the interests of the company and the interests of the individuals. Talk to Andrea Tsakanikas about how CrewFacilities.com can take the savings on travel expenses a notch higher using incentives and other techniques, such as leveraging the relationships CrewFacilities has with hotels and other providers of lodging facilities.