How to use it: replace every [bracketed] field, delete sections that do not apply, and approve the result under your document-control process. The full template text is below; the Word download is the same document, ready to edit. Guidance notes explain intent — delete them from your final policy.
1. Purpose and scope
This policy governs all travel undertaken for [Company] business by employees, contractors, and authorised visitors, on all transport modes: commercial flights, transport owned, leased, or chartered by [Company] (aircraft, vessels, vehicles), and accommodation including hotels, guesthouses, and camps.
Business travel is booked, approved, and paid under this policy. Private travel on [Company]-operated transport, where permitted, is governed by Section 5 and is paid by the traveller.
Guidance: state the business/private boundary early. The cleanest control model keeps private travel on the same platform but entirely outside company money.
2. Roles and responsibilities
- Traveller — books through approved channels, keeps bookings current, and cancels seats that will not be used.
- Travel arranger — may book on behalf of travellers within the same rules; arranger bookings continue during any booking suspension of the traveller.
- Approver — holds delegation of financial authority ([DFA reference]) and approves trips and claims within delegated limits.
- Policy owner ([role]) — maintains this document, its machine-readable counterpart, and the exception log.
Guidance: name roles, not people. If a colleague can book on a banned traveller's behalf, essential travel continues while behaviour is corrected.
3. Booking channels and approval
- All business travel is booked through [approved channel/platform]; bookings made outside approved channels are not reimbursable unless an exception is approved under Section 11.
- Trips require approval before booking where the estimated cost exceeds [amount] or the destination is [risk category]; approval is recorded with the booking, not in separate correspondence.
- Booking windows: [class of travel] must be booked at least [X days] before departure; late requests route to [role] for approval.
Guidance: approval belongs in the booking flow. An approval that lives in an email thread cannot be audited against the trip record.
4. Commercial air travel
- Class of travel: [economy] for flights under [X] hours; [premium/business] permitted for flights over [X] hours or where [criteria].
- The lowest logical fare applies: the cheapest fare meeting the business need within [time window] of the preferred departure.
- Loyalty benefits accrue to the traveller but must never determine carrier or routing choice.
5. Owned, leased, and chartered transport
This section governs seats on transport [Company] owns, leases, or charters — aircraft, vessels, buses, and vehicles. These seats carry no fare: the asset is paid for whether or not seats are used, so allocation is governed by priority and entitlement rather than price.
- Priority — seats are allocated by the priority matrix in [Appendix/policy system], which ranks each passenger type and trip reason. Medical movements hold the highest priority. Business travel outranks private travel on the same departure.
- Quotas — entitlement to travel is capped per [traveller/group/trip reason] at [N] sectors per [period]. Quota consumption is visible to the traveller at booking.
- Booking windows — each passenger type may book from [X days] before departure, staging demand so higher-priority movements are protected.
- No-shows and late cancellations — a missed departure or cancellation within [X hours] incurs [penalty points] scaled by how close to departure it occurs. Rescheduling to a same-day departure incurs no penalty — the traveller still travelled, and the seat was not wasted. Accumulating [N] points within [period] suspends self-booking for [duration]; a travel arranger may still book on the traveller's behalf.
- Freed seats — seats released by cancellation or no-show are reallocated to waiting travellers (go-shows) up to [X minutes] before departure.
- Displacement — where a higher-priority traveller requires a full flight or sailing, the lowest-priority confirmed traveller is offloaded, notified with the reason, and rebooked on the next available departure.
- Key-person separation — personnel designated under [continuity register] may not travel on the same departure.
Guidance: this is the section generic templates omit, because most travel tools cannot enforce it. If these rules are enforced by spreadsheets, expect drift; a machine-readable policy executed by a deterministic engine keeps every clause auditable. The public JSON Schema for this section defines every field, and the free Policy Builder produces the machine-readable document from your rules.
6. Accommodation
- Hotel bookings follow the rate caps in [Appendix] by city or region.
- Camp and guesthouse rooms are allocated under the same priority and quota rules as transport seats (Section 5); room no-shows carry the same penalties as seat no-shows.
Guidance: for remote operations the bed is as contended as the seat; governing them under one policy prevents the room becoming the loophole.
7. Ground transport
- Travellers to the same site on the same day share vehicles where scheduled; pool vehicles are booked through [system].
- Bus (BIBO) and drive (DIDO) rotations are booked as legs of the same journey as any flight, under the same policy record.
8. Budget approval and payment control
- Every business booking passes budget approval under delegation of financial authority before commitment.
- For business bookings, no payment is made without an approved claim reference. Claims must be submitted within [X days] of travel.
- Private travel, where permitted, is paid by the traveller at booking and never touches company accounts.
Guidance: this is the second commonly omitted section — the mechanical link between approval and payment. Stated as policy it is a rule; enforced at the point of booking it is a control.
9. Expense claims and reimbursement
- Reimbursable categories and limits are set out in [Appendix]; receipts are required above [amount].
- Claims are submitted through [system] with the trip reference, so every expense reconciles to a governed booking.
- Per diems, where applicable, follow [rate table] and are not payable alongside receipted meals.
10. Duty of care and safety
- [Company] maintains a live record of traveller location across all modes for the duration of each journey.
- Travel to [risk categories] requires [training/clearance/insurance] before booking; the booking system enforces these prerequisites.
- In an emergency, [role/desk] is the single point of contact; travellers follow rebooking instructions issued through [channel].
11. Compliance, exceptions, and audit
- Exceptions require approval by [role] and are recorded in the exception log with the clause varied, the reason, and the approval.
- Every booking decision must be reconstructable: what was requested, what the policy said at the time, and why the outcome followed.
Guidance: reproducibility, not accuracy, is the audit standard — the question a reviewer asks is whether a specific decision from a year ago can be explained from the record.
12. Policy governance and review
- This policy is owned by [role], reviewed every [period], and versioned; the version in force at booking time governs each decision.
- Where a machine-readable counterpart of this policy exists, it is authoritative for automated decisions, and this document is authored from it — the two must not diverge.
Guidance: one pre-deconflicted, machine-precise policy document beats many overlapping PDFs. The Policy Builder produces exactly that for the leased-transport section, and the wider argument is in the corporate travel policy guide.
Common questions
What should a corporate travel policy template include?
Twelve sections cover a complete policy: purpose and scope; roles and responsibilities; booking channels and approval; commercial air travel; owned, leased, and chartered transport; accommodation; ground transport; budget approval and payment control; expense claims and reimbursement; duty of care and safety; compliance, exceptions, and audit; and policy governance and review. The two sections most templates omit are the ones that govern transport the organisation runs itself and the mechanical link between approval and payment.
Is there a free corporate travel policy template I can download?
Yes — this page provides the complete twelve-section template as a free Word document, with the full annotated text on the page. Replace the bracketed fields, delete sections that do not apply, and approve the result under your document-control process. No account or email is required.
What do most corporate travel policy templates leave out?
Two things. First, transport the organisation owns, leases, or charters — seats with no fare, which must be allocated by priority, quotas, booking windows, and penalties rather than price; generic templates assume every trip is bought from a third party. Second, payment control: the mechanical rule that, for business bookings, no payment is made without an approved claim reference. Both are included here as Sections 5 and 8.
How do I make a travel policy enforceable rather than just documented?
Pair the prose document with a machine-readable counterpart and enforce it at the point of booking. A policy that lives only as a PDF is applied from memory and drifts; a policy compiled into a deterministic engine is applied identically every time, and every decision is auditable. The public JSON Schema defines the leased-transport section, and the free Policy Builder produces the machine-readable document from your rules.