4 simple ways to find business travel benefits and discounts

We wrote recently on the BlackBridge blog about how our Director of Business Operations, Vincent Fabrico, is our resident “road warrior” who regularly makes business development trips around the country to meet with our trading partners (and prospective trading partners). We feel that business travel is a great investment for our company in building stronger relationships and establishing deeper trust with our buyers and trading partners.

One of the ways to make business travel so much more affordable and efficient is to take advantage of online tools to find great discounts and benefits for frequent fliers.

Here are a few of our favorite sites and tips to get excellent discounts and benefits for your next business trip:

Be a frequent flier: Frequent flier miles have often been inflated in recent years, but depending on your airline of choice, it still pays to be a frequent flier. You can get a frequent flier credit card that helps you earn frequent flier miles every time you make a purchase. Here is a great article from travel writer Joe Brancatelli on how to get the most benefits from your frequent-flier travel rewards program.

Kayak.com: This is one of the first sites we check whenever it’s time to book a flight for a business trip. Kayak is a great site because it aggregates hundreds of other discount airfare sites and makes it easy to find the best rates, without having to sort and sift and compare lots of data. Kayak can also help you find deals on hotels, cars, and overall travel packages – which makes it good for personal use as well as business travel!

Hipmunk.com: This is another top-rated discount travel aggregator site. One of the things that makes Hipmunk unique is that their site is exceptionally well designed – eliminating a lot of confusion and irrelevant search results. It’s easy on Hipmunk to find exactly the right flight itinerary that is best for your needs, without accidentally getting the wrong connections or a less-than-cheap fare. They also have a Hipmunk for Business feature that makes it easy to import calendars (for easy flight scheduling) and coordinate travel schedules among multiple people at your company.

Hotels.com: Kayak and Hipmunk can help find deals on hotel rooms, but it’s still worth checking out Hotels.com for their selection of over 200,000 hotels in more than 60 countries. Hotels.com also has a pretty significant rewards program – if you stay 10 nights, you can get 1 night free. This is a good deal for frequent business travelers.

In the “old days” of business travel, the only way to get good deals was to be part of a big company that had special bulk discounts or special connections with travel agencies. Today, it’s easier than ever before for companies of all sizes to find cheap flights, affordable hotels and good deals on rental cars. Business travel still requires an investment of time and energy and money, but it doesn’t have to be a prohibitively expensive proposition. So don’t hesitate to get in front of your best buyers and trading partners, in person – and use some of these great online tools to make it more affordable than you might expect.

When traveling for business, what are some of your favorite discount sites and ways to get good deals and rewards?