{"id":2686,"date":"2026-01-20T17:46:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T17:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/wptest\/2026\/01\/20\/decluttering-your-business-travels\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T18:18:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:18:22","slug":"decluttering-your-business-travels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/2026\/01\/20\/decluttering-your-business-travels\/","title":{"rendered":"Decluttering your business travels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Owners of untidy homes and weary business travellers may not realise that they have much in common until Japanese decluttering expert Marie Kondo came along. She made the connection clear.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Just like it\u2019s possible \u2212 with the right method \u2212 to transform your chaotic home into a neat abode that sparks joy, it\u2019s possible to turn business travel from pain to pleasure with some technological ingenuity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Traditionally, before making their trips, business travellers need to:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Manually conduct multiple searches for their desired flights and hotels. Bookings are done separately with the need to repeatedly key in personal and booking information.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Manually consolidate multiple bookings in one place, often in a paper-based fashion with no capability for changes or real-time prompts and updates.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Go through a tedious submission process for internal approval of trip.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Diligently safekeep paper receipts collected along the trip.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Laboriously go through paper receipts and key in details for claims upon return.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">With modern, mobile-based travel and expense technologies, business travellers will be able to declutter all these processes, better organise their trips, and take more effective care of their own safety.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">For instance, they could:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Use smart apps to book all flights, hotels and rental cars, streamlining travel booking, claims and invoicing management from start to finish.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Declutter \u2212 organise all their travel plans in one place, including personal arrangements done with their favourite travel service providers like Airbnb and Uber.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Receive real-time flight alerts throughout their trip, and very coolly, get notified when a better seat becomes available.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Link various frequent flyer accounts and reward programs on one platform, no matter whether they are travelling for business, leisure or both. This integration ability lets travellers save time on bookings and leverage a B2C experience, while staying within the policy needs of their company. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">These features are particularly attractive for millennial travellers. And that\u2019s an important demographic for corporates and travel companies to cater to because\u00a0Asian millennials\u2019 spend on international travel, according to theUNWTO World Tourism Barometer, is expected to\u00a0<u><a href=\"https:\/\/www.webintravel.com\/10-travel-trends-of-asian-holidaymakers-to-watch-out-for\/\">increase by 1.6 times<\/a><\/u>\u00a0to US$340 billion by 2020. In Singapore itself, Expedia found that\u00a0<u><a href=\"http:\/\/popspoken.com\/events\/2017\/03\/millennial-traveller-expedia\/amp\">84% of millennials travel at least once a year<\/a><\/u>, higher than baby boomers (73%) and the Generation X (82%).<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Keep their company in the loop so it can render on-site assistance when the need arises. Modern apps can help firms proactively monitor weather, violence, system disruptions or other risks that may impact their travellers, communicate with them and connect them to expert support.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Take pictures of their paper receipts, submit them instantly for claims and forget about safekeeping them. Some apps can automatically create, itemise and categorise charges in expense reports.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Use apps to auto-submit hotel, restaurant and transportation e-receipts, or enable these vendors to submit their receipts directly to your corporate expense system. This paperless approach aids environmental preservation. Other sustainable options exist for modern apps \u2013 travellers may be able to optimise their routes based on emissions, be encouraged to consider the low carbon option of rail travel, and rent environmentally friendly cars from designated rental firms.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Looking beyond travellers themselves, all these capabilities can tidy up operations for finance managers and make their work a breeze.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The data of employees\u2019 bookings across multiple channels all flow back to the finance team. The team gets more visibility and greater insights, so they can apply policy on direct bookings and better manage compliance and approvals. With this same data, the finance department could anticipate needs, predict challenges, identify opportunities on the fly, and tackle everything from taxes and compliance risk to mobile phone expenses and fraud. All in all, a company could create a best-in-class experience for its employee travellers while dramatically improving its financial controls and productivity organisation-wide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Without doubt, technology can free employees of the mundane hindrances of travel, giving them a clear mind to get their business done.\u00a0With business travel within Asia\u00a0<u><a href=\"https:\/\/www.webintravel.com\/bleisure-and-sharing-services-growing-in-popularity-among-apac-business-travellers-reveals-research\/\">growing at twice the pace<\/a><\/u>\u00a0of the rest of the world,\u00a0China being the\u00a0<u><a href=\"https:\/\/skift.com\/2018\/10\/11\/the-promise-of-chinas-enormous-corporate-travel-market\/\">world\u2019s largest business travel market<\/a><\/u>,\u00a0and India\u00a0and Indonesia forecast to be the globe\u2019s fastest expanding markets over the next five years (clocking 11.3% and 8.7% respectively in compound annual growth),\u00a0the time for firms to take action and put some joy into their travel and expense experience is now<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><em>By Andy Watson, SVP and GM, Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China, SAP Concur<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Owners of untidy homes and weary business travellers may not realise that they have much in common until Japanese decluttering expert Marie Kondo came along. She made the connection clear. Just like it\u2019s possible \u2212 with the right method \u2212 to transform your chaotic home into a neat abode that sparks joy, it\u2019s possible to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5922,"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions\/5922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malaysian-business.com\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}