In the first 30 days, travel coordination means setting up four things in a fixed order: a written travel policy, one agreed way to book, a clear approval route, and a reliable way to reach travellers. Everything else can wait. The order of work below is set out by day, followed by what to leave alone until these four run without daily intervention.

Days 1 to 5: Establish what already exists

Do not design anything yet. Collect what the company already does, even if it is informal. Ask finance for the last 12 months of travel spend and the cards or accounts it was charged to. Ask the most frequent travellers how they book today. Ask HR or legal whether any written rule, contract or insurance policy mentions travel.

Three facts are needed by day 5: total annual spend (split into air, hotel, rail and car where possible), the number of people who travel more than four times a year, and who currently approves trips. These figures decide every later choice. A company with 15 regular travellers needs a lighter set-up than one with 300.

Anyone moving into the work from an executive assistant post will find that making the move official with a defined remit saves disputes later about who owns which decision.

Days 6 to 10: Write a one-page travel policy

A travel policy is the written statement of what may be booked, at what cost, and with whose permission. In month one it should fit on one page. Longer documents are rarely read and are hard to enforce.

Cover these points and no others:

  • Who may travel and for what business purposes.
  • Cabin class and fare rules, usually by flight length (for example, economy under a stated number of hours).
  • Hotel limits per night, set by city or by city tier.
  • Advance booking expectations, since fares generally rise closer to departure.
  • Expenses: what is reimbursed, with what receipts, within how many days.
  • Who approves exceptions.

Obtain sign-off from a named senior person before circulating it. A policy without an executive owner is advice, and travellers treat it as such.

Days 11 to 18: Decide how bookings are made

A booking channel is the single route through which trips are reserved. Having one matters more than which one is chosen, because it gives a complete record of who is where and what was spent. There are three common options:

  • A travel management company (TMC): an agency that books and supports business travel for a client company, usually for a fee per transaction or a management fee.
  • An online booking tool (OBT): software where travellers book within policy themselves, often provided through a TMC.
  • Coordinator booking: the coordinator books directly on behalf of travellers.

For a small or newly formalised programme, coordinator booking with a TMC for complex trips is usually sufficient. An OBT becomes worth its cost when volume is high enough that the coordinator is spending most of the week on routine reservations. Request written quotes from two or three TMCs, and ask each how it handles out-of-hours changes, since disruption rarely happens on a weekday morning. A review of tools and software for travel coordinators helps set the questions to ask vendors.

Whichever route is chosen, set up traveller profiles (name exactly as on the passport, contact numbers, loyalty memberships, seat and meal preferences) before the first booking. Profile errors are the most common cause of avoidable ticket changes.

Days 19 to 24: Build the approval route

An approval route states who must agree to a trip before it is booked. Keep it short. Two levels are enough in most organisations: the traveller's line manager approves the purpose and the budget, and the coordinator checks the booking against policy.

Write the rule for out-of-policy requests at the same time. Name the person who decides, and the time they have to respond. Where no response time is stated, travellers book outside the system to avoid waiting, and the record becomes incomplete.

Agree how approvals are recorded. A shared mailbox or a simple request form is adequate. What matters is that each approval can be found later by trip, by date and by approver.

Days 25 to 30: Set up traveller contact and duty of care

Duty of care is an employer's obligation to take reasonable steps to protect the health and safety of employees while they work, including when travelling. In practice, it means knowing where travellers are and being able to reach them quickly.

The minimum set-up is modest:

  • A single list, updated with every booking, of who is travelling, where, and on which dates.
  • An emergency contact for each traveller, plus a company contact available outside office hours.
  • A short written procedure for disruption: a cancelled flight, a lost passport, a medical event, a security incident.
  • A pre-trip message to the traveller containing itinerary, local emergency numbers and whom to call.

Test the procedure once before relying on it. Send a message to a traveller currently abroad and record how long a reply takes. Fix whatever caused delay.

What to skip in the first 30 days

Several tasks look urgent and are not.

  • Hotel rate negotiation. Negotiated rates need a year of booking data to be worth discussing. Terms such as LRA (last room availability, a hotel's commitment to sell a corporate-rate room even when it is nearly full) only matter once there is volume to offer. Reading how negotiated, dynamic and LRA rates differ is useful preparation, but negotiating comes later.
  • Airline corporate deals. The same reasoning applies. Spend history comes first.
  • Expense system integration. Connect the booking channel to expenses after the booking process is stable, not while it is being defined.
  • Elaborate reporting. One monthly figure is enough at first: total spend against budget.
  • A tool purchase before the policy exists. Software configured without rules encodes guesses.

What should exist on day 30

By the end of the month there should be a one-page policy with an executive owner, one booking channel, a written approval route, a traveller list with emergency contacts, and a disruption procedure that has been tested once. That is a functioning programme. Month two is for measuring it: compliance with policy, time spent per booking, and the first spend report.

Organisations that need this built faster, or want an outside review of what has been set up, can use travel management consulting. Coordinators building their own skills alongside the work can follow the structured path in Zero to Travel Coordinator.