If there is trouble somewhere, can I quickly see which of my staff are travelling there?

Yes, you can, as long as the trip was booked through your own portal. Every flight and hotel booking on the system carries the traveller name, the dates and the destination, so your travel desk can search by city or country and pull up a list of who is due to arrive, who is already there and when they are booked to come home. That takes a few minutes rather than ringing round every department and asking managers to check their own diaries.

Be clear about what it cannot see. If someone booked their own flight straight with an airline, or a branch office used a different agency, that trip is not in your system and will not appear in the list, so the picture is only as complete as the share of company travel that goes through the portal. The same goes for contact details. If a mobile number was never collected on the traveller profile, you will know where the person is meant to be but you will not have a quick way to reach them.

Once you have the list, your team can email or message those travellers from inside the system, add a note to each booking, and start looking at changes or earlier flights home where the supplier allows it. Whether a booking can actually be moved or refunded still depends on the fare rules and on what the airline or hotel supplier is willing to do at the time.

A good thing to check now is how much of your company travel really is booked through the portal, and whether mobile numbers are being captured for every traveller, because those two things decide how useful this list is on the day you need it.