Most travel coordinator job descriptions list the same things: “strong organisational skills,” “attention to detail,” “excellent communication.” These are real requirements, but they’re also so vague that they’re almost useless if you’re trying to prepare for the role.

This guide goes deeper. Here are the seven skills that actually differentiate candidates in hiring, what they look like in practice, and how to build each one.

1. OBT Fluency (Online Booking Tool)

What it is: The ability to work confidently in corporate booking platforms. Searching and booking is the easy half. The rest is approval workflows, policy configuration, traveller profiles and reporting.

Why it matters: Most corporate travel programs run through an OBT. If you can’t navigate it from day one, you’re a liability rather than an asset. The most common platforms in 2026 are Concur (still dominant in large enterprises), Navan (growing fast in mid-market), and TravelPerk (popular with European companies and SMEs).

How to build it: All three platforms have free trials or lite versions. GBTA and LinkedIn Learning offer OBT-specific modules. If you get an interview, research which platform the company uses, even a surface-level familiarity signals the right instincts.

How to demonstrate it: Be specific on your CV and in interviews. “Experience with Concur Travel for 120 travellers” is better than “familiar with corporate booking systems.”

2. Policy Understanding and Application

What it is: Knowing what a corporate travel policy contains, why it exists, and how to apply it consistently, including how to handle exceptions without creating resentment or precedents that come back to haunt you.

Why it matters: Policy compliance is one of the primary value-adds of a coordinator over just letting employees book themselves. A coordinator who doesn’t understand or enforce policy is leaving cost control and risk management on the table.

How to build it: Read real travel policies. Many companies publish their travel policies publicly or in employee handbooks. The GBTA and ACTE both publish policy benchmarking guides. Try writing a simple travel policy for a hypothetical 50-person company, the exercise reveals gaps in your understanding fast.

How to demonstrate it: In interviews, bring an example of a time you applied policy under pressure, a traveller who wanted to book outside policy, an exception request from a senior person, a situation where budget and traveller preference conflicted.

3. Real-Time Problem-Solving

What it is: The ability to respond to disruptions (cancelled flights, overbooked hotels, missed connections, visa rejections) quickly, calmly, and effectively, often with limited information and a traveller on the phone.

Why it matters: This is the skill that separates coordinators who are valuable from those who are expensive to have around. In a disruption, someone who panics or waits for instructions costs time and money. Someone who already knows the rebooking protocol, the airline’s duty of care obligations, and how to communicate calmly with the traveller is invaluable.

How to build it: Build your own disruption protocol: what do you do in the first 30 minutes of a cancellation? Who do you call? In what order? What are the traveller’s rights under EU261 or US DOT rules? Run through the scenario in your head (or on paper) before it happens. Experience helps, but so does preparation.

How to demonstrate it: Every strong coordinator has a disruption story. Have one ready. Structure it clearly: situation, decision, outcome. If you don’t have a real example yet, walk through what you would do: it shows the same thinking.

4. Vendor and Supplier Management

What it is: Managing the external relationships that support the travel program (preferred hotels, airlines, car hire companies, TMCs), including negotiating rates, tracking performance, and maintaining productive working relationships.

Why it matters: Companies that don’t manage supplier relationships are paying rack rate, losing out on volume incentives, and missing the use they’ve already earned. Coordinators who can manage these relationships generate measurable value.

How to build it: Start with what you have. If you’re already booking through certain hotels or airlines repeatedly, reach out to their corporate sales or account management teams. Ask about corporate rates. Learn how preferred programs work. Read about how hotel RFPs work: understanding the process is a prerequisite for running one.

How to demonstrate it: Even basic supplier conversations count. “I reached out to our most-used hotel chain and negotiated a 15% discount on corporate rates” is a concrete example that most candidates can’t offer. The number doesn’t need to be dramatic, the initiative does.

5. Spend Tracking and Basic Reporting

What it is: The ability to track travel expenditure, identify trends and anomalies, and present spend data to finance or management in a way that’s useful rather than overwhelming.

Why it matters: Travel is often one of the largest controllable cost lines in a company’s P&L. A coordinator who can report on it clearly (what was spent, where, by whom, against what budget) is contributing to financial governance, not just logistics.

How to build it: Excel or Google Sheets is the starting point. Build a simple travel spend tracker for your current role and maintain it for a quarter. Then try turning it into a one-page monthly report. If you have access to OBT or expense data, use it. If not, use what you have.

How to demonstrate it: Bring a sample report (anonymised if necessary) to an interview. Or describe the reporting cadence you’ve built: “I produce a monthly travel spend summary for our CFO showing cost by department, preferred supplier usage, and out-of-policy bookings.” Specificity is everything.

6. Duty of Care Basics

What it is: Understanding the company’s legal and ethical obligations toward employees while they’re travelling, and having the processes in place to meet them.

Why it matters: This is an area where the consequences of getting it wrong are serious. If a company can’t locate an employee during a crisis, or failed to check FCO/State Department advice before sending someone somewhere dangerous, the legal and reputational exposure is real.

How to build it: Start with the basics: what does duty of care mean in the country you’re based in? What travel risk tools exist (WorldAware, International SOS, Riskline)? Does your current employer have an emergency protocol? If not, what would one look like? These questions will anchor your understanding of what’s needed.

How to demonstrate it: You don’t need to have run a duty of care audit to show you understand it. Demonstrating that you know what questions to ask: “Do you track where travellers are in real time? What’s the protocol if something happens during a trip?”: signals the right instincts.

7. AI Tool Literacy

What it is: Practical experience using AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot) to accelerate coordination tasks: drafting traveller communications, summarising supplier contracts, reconciling expense data, building policy documents, creating destination briefings.

Why it matters: This is a 2026 differentiator that will be table stakes by 2027. Coordinators who use AI tools effectively are faster, more accurate, and can take on higher-value work. Those who don’t are competing on speed and volume against people who automate parts of the job.

How to build it: Start using AI tools for the tasks you already do. Draft a traveller communication. Ask Claude to summarise a supplier contract. Use it to check whether a policy covers a specific scenario. Build prompts that work for your most common tasks and save them. We publish practical AI prompts and workflows for coordinators atTravelCoordination.com.

How to demonstrate it: Be specific. “I use AI tools to produce traveller destination briefings in about 10 minutes instead of 45” is a concrete, credible claim. “I’m familiar with AI” is noise.

Putting It Together

You don’t need all seven of these at interview level to get hired, particularly for an entry-level role. But knowing which ones you have, which ones you’re building, and being able to talk clearly about both will put you ahead of most candidates.

The coordinators who progress quickly aren’t the ones who knew everything at entry. They’re the ones who knew what they didn’t know and closed the gaps fast.

Build the gaps, fast.

Our 1-to-1 Travel Skills Training is built around these exact competencies: practical, targeted, no theory for its own sake. Book a free 15-minute call →