Travel is a part of many careers and lives. Whether you're flying to meet clients, visiting a factory, or just on vacation with your family, travel involves a lot of administrative work. You need to consider flights, hotels, reservations, transportation, the trip's schedule, and possibly budgeting and expenses.
It's a lot of work for one person to handle, especially if you travel regularly. That's why so many business leaders and frequent travelers work with a virtual assistant (or virtual travel assistant).
Below, you will find out why even tech-savvy executives should delegate travel booking to a virtual assistant.
We'll also provide three tips for delegating successfully.
Why Bother When I Can Do It Myself?
Many executives, particularly younger and more tech-savvy managers, believe they can and should manage travel bookings themselves. They do so to reduce headcount, save costs, and streamline organizational structures.
However, this approach can cause more problems than it solves. Highly paid executives are now spending their hours on travel planning. Hours they could spend on revenue-generating work, strategic development, or any number of tasks only they can do.
There are two significant reasons executives find it hard to delegate travel.
- The belief that travel services like Kayak or TripAdvisor have made travel planning easy. Many executives feel there’s little value in delegating to a virtual administrative assistant, since they can make all the arrangements in a few clicks and know their own preferences better than any assistant ever will.
- The question of "Do I spend more time today training my assistant (on my preferences) so I can save time tomorrow?" Less experienced managers are often more hesitant to delegate because they lack trust in others' ability to learn and develop quickly enough. They focus on ensuring that the net present value of the time saved by delegation outweighs the time they invest in the process.
Both are issues of process and trust. The fear of doing things wrong prevents leaders from investing in building better processes.
Travel planning is a task that can be effectively outsourced.
Virtual travel assistants have access to tools, best practices, and documentation. When you work with a virtual assistant, they use a combination of organizational skills, clear, templated workflows, and your documented preferences to make sure your plans go aaccording to, well, plan.
This saves you stress and money while improving your productivity and travel organization.
Strategic Travel Planning with a Virtual Assistant
If you've ever worked with an executive assistant, you're probably familiar with the travel planning process. You send over the outline of your needs, and they source your flights.
A managed virtual assistant service takes this process to the next level. Here's what they can do:
Document Your Preferences
The first step is understanding your high-level preferences. Do you only fly business class? Never want a red eye? Have a preferred car company? A managed service, like Prialto, will note all your preferred details (adding to the list over time) so it knows your needs and preferences. These notes will become your assistant's guide to managing your travel.
Travel Research
Your travel assistant can research your flights, accommodations, restaurants, and more, all tailored to your preferences. They'll conduct thorough research and provide recommendations and options. This research can be as detailed, varied, or exact as you prefer.
Travel Documentation
Beyond simple research, your assistant can also help with your documentation needs. Your virtual assistant can manage visas, travel insurance, and health requirements—making sure you have what you need when you need it.
Booking Management
Once you've selected your preferred flights, transportation, and accommodations from the research, your travel planning virtual assistant can handle booking everything. They'll secure the best available rates, monitor for changes and cancellations, and bring anything that could disrupt your plans to your attention. Instead of managing logistics yourself, you just need to answer questions as they arise.
Itinerary Planning
Of course, most virtual assistants aren't only travel booking assistants. With a managed service, they're embedded in your business (or personal) context. They can help you plan your whole trip, your calendar, and communications with vendors, partners, or experiences. They can build out your calendar with confirmation numbers, addresses, travel times, and other details so you always know where you need to be and when.
Expenses
Traveling for work? Expense management is another core service virtual assistants often offer. Your assistant can keep your travel on budget, manage and submit your receipts, assist with mileage reimbursement, and more. Then, they'll make sure everything is properly submitted and organized.
3 Tips For Delegating Travel Management Successfully
Of course, not all virtual assistant services and travel management processes are built the same. Here are a few tips to help you select the right service and optimize your virtual assistant workflows.
-
Make sure you are dealing with a trained assistant
What makes a great virtual assistant? A phenomenal virtual assistant will ask you questions: what time you like to fly, what are the cost constraints, what are your meal preferences, etc? They should anticipate your needs and proactively improve your experience.
-
Just get there: optimize as you go
Perfection never happens on the first try. If your first trip gets 80% of the way there, your assistant can improve your next trip based on learnings. As you work together, your documentation improves and your experiences get better. You might even discover preferences you didn't even know you had.
-
Empower your assistant to be strategic about booking your travel arrangements
If your assistant is only executing your vision, you might be missing out on valuable talent. If you empower your travel virtual assistant to be proactive, you'll get better results. They can offer proactive advice and monitoring that can improve your travel experience—reducing friction, stress, and anxiety around your travel plans.
The Prialto Difference
Prialto is a managed virtual assistant service. Unlike more talent-agency-style services, we provide a fully managed approach to administrative work. That means you get access to more than just an assistant. Prialto assistants are full-time Prialto employees with access to training, best practices, and internal management. You get access to continuity through documentation and backup support, an engagement manager (your productivity expert), and SOC-2-certified security.
We have training and management covered, so you can reap the benefits of excellent, productive support.
Learn more about how it works: Schedule a consultation call