The reference work
Corporate Travel Management
Business travel as a governance discipline — cost, compliance, technology, sustainability, duty of care and data as one system
In many companies travel is the third-largest controllable spend category — and the worst governed. Not for lack of tools, but because six fields of action are worked on in isolation when they only take effect together. This book shows how a booking function becomes a governance discipline.
What it covers
- Six fields, one system. Cost, compliance, technology, sustainability, duty of care, and data and reporting interlock. Optimising one while ignoring the others moves the problem rather than solving it.
- Data ownership as a cross-cutting theme. If you do not control the data of your own travel programme, you cannot govern it, however good the contracts are. That question runs through every chapter.
- Applicable rather than academic. Nine governance instruments in the appendix, each with its audience, the effort involved and a version for smaller programmes.
Duty of care separates programmes that protect travellers from programmes that merely document risk.
The question is not “how much AI do we introduce?” but “which architecture decisions do we take deliberately instead of delegating them to vendors?”
Governing by metrics calls for fewer of them, not more — tied precisely to actions.
For whom
Travel managers in large groups, in the mid-market and in smaller companies. Procurement, finance and executives who are accountable for travel programmes without working on them daily. And anyone teaching the field or growing into it.
Companion volume — Corporate Travel Management in Practice: tenders, RFPs, tools. Eleven complete tendering instruments for TMC, air, hotel, car rental, rail, booking tool, expense system, payment, reporting and travel policy. From needs analysis to signed contract.
The practical guide
Workation
Working from anywhere — made legally sound, organisationally anchored, and folded into the travel policy
Four in ten employees in Germany are open to changing jobs, and flexibility over where they work ranks at the top for the younger generation. At the same time the company carries the liability — for social security, tax, occupational safety and data security, across every border. Workation rarely fails for lack of willingness. It fails on unresolved responsibilities.
What it covers
- The legal position, made comprehensible. Posting of workers, A1 certificates, permanent establishment risk, the 183-day rule: what actually applies, and at what point it becomes critical.
- The distinction many skip. Workation is not remote work, not home office, not digital nomadism. The differences determine the legal treatment.
- What the research says, not what the debate claims. The evidence on productivity, loss of innovation and proximity bias is assessed soberly, including where it runs against expectation.
- A short policy. A set of rules that fits into an existing travel policy rather than sitting beside it.
For whom
HR and people leadership, travel management, compliance, tax and legal. And executives with a request on their desk who need a defensible answer.
The blueprint
Strategic Meeting Management
Making meetings and events visible, governable and fit for the future
Travel spend, marketing budgets and IT costs have been governed with data for years. External meetings and events remain the blank spot: spread across many cost centres, under shifting ownership, without a consistent set of rules. The blind billion — that is what the first chapter calls the figure nobody in many companies can state in full.
What it covers
- Why the gap arises. Five structural causes: missing ownership, historically grown exceptions, decentralised micro-decisions, opaque supplier pricing, absent system support.
- How transparency is built. Categorisation as the foundation: five core types of external meetings, each with its pricing patterns, supplier requirements and compliance topics.
- Governance that does not stifle creativity. Rules that steer without standardising events until they lose their effect.
- The whole path there. From the analysis phase through sourcing and contract models to metrics, technology selection and change management.
For whom
Travel and event management, procurement, finance, HR, communications, compliance, executives and service providers.
If you would like to discuss one of these topics, or to hear when they appear: write me a line.