Outsourcing business travel coordination: hiring a travel virtual assistant

File summary

In this file

1. What you are buying
2. Who buys it, and when
3. Work packages
4. A statement of work you can copy
5. The options memo
6. Travel policy and approval matrix
7. Payment controls
8. Entry rules and duty of care
9. Passport and traveller data
10. Sizing the seat
11. Engagement models compared
12. Total cost of ownership
13. SLAs and out-of-hours cover
14. KPIs
15. Risk register
16. Vendor questionnaire
17. The booking test
18. 30/60/90-day onboarding
19. Exit and red flags
20. Requesting candidates

What you are buying

Every business trip carries a block of desk work that has nothing to do with the reason for the trip. Someone compares flights against the meeting times, checks which hotel is close to the client's office and inside the rate cap, books the train for the second leg, builds the itinerary, notices the airline moved the departure by three hours, rebooks the car, and, after the trip, chases the receipts so the expense report closes. In most small and mid-sized companies that someone is the traveller, an executive assistant who has other work, or an office manager who does it in the evening.

This file covers buying that desk work as a seat: one dedicated remote coordinator who works only for your company, books your team's own travel in your own booking accounts and tools, follows your travel policy, and gets every purchase approved the way your policy says. You are buying hours of coordination, not tickets. The coordinator does not resell travel, does not earn commission on what you book, and does not pay for anything with their own card.

Three things stay with your company whatever the contract says: the payment cards, the decision to approve a trip or an exception, and decisions about travellers' safety. A good vendor will expect that and write it into the scope. A vendor who offers to "take care of payments" or to advise travellers on visas is selling a different service, and probably one you don't want.

Who buys it, and when

The purchase usually starts in one of five places: a founder or executive office with one to three frequent travellers and short-notice changes; a sales or account team making short client visits and trade-show trips; field, project or consulting teams on repeat trips and crew rotations; operations or HR running offsites, conferences and interview travel; or a finance team with an expense backlog and bookings outside policy. The first usually needs 40–80 hours inside a wider executive-support seat; field teams and busy sales teams often fill a full-time seat. Name your profile in the request: it changes the scope, the hours and the controls.

The seat fits when trips are frequent enough to keep someone busy, your bookings can be made online or by phone, and you have (or are willing to write) a short travel policy. It fits poorly if your company travels a few times a year, if every trip needs someone at the office to handle paper documents, or if what you really need is a negotiated corporate airfare programme, which is a travel management company's job.

Work packages

Split the role into packages so the statement of work, the hours and the KPIs all refer to the same units. Most buyers start with packages one to four and add the rest after the first month.

A statement of work you can copy

The options memo

The options memo is the core deliverable of the seat. It turns "book me something for Tuesday" into a decision the traveller or approver can make in a minute, and it leaves a record of why a fare or hotel was chosen. Agree its format in the first week and keep it the same for every trip.

Measure the gap between memo and reply in your first month: when fares are lost, slow approvals are a likelier cause than slow research.

Travel policy and approval matrix

A remote coordinator can only follow a policy that is written down. If yours lives in people's heads, use the first two weeks to write a two-page version: booking window, cabin rules, hotel caps by city or region, car class, who approves what, and how exceptions are recorded. The approval matrix below is a template; the thresholds in brackets are yours to set.

Two rules make the matrix work in practice. First, the approval comes in the channel your policy names (the booking tool's approval flow, or a reply in one shared thread), never in a private message the coordinator can't show later. Second, no approval, no purchase: if an approver is unreachable and a fare is about to expire, the coordinator tells the traveller and the backup approver and waits.

Payment controls

Payment is where outsourced travel coordination most often goes wrong, and it is the easiest part to design properly. The principle: the coordinator can trigger a payment inside your tools but never holds the means of payment.

If a supplier insists on taking a card by phone and you have no stored-card option, have the traveller or your finance team give the number directly, or ask the supplier for a secure payment link sent to your finance address. Monthly, finance reconciles card charges against the trip files; anything without an approval record is investigated, whoever made it.

Entry rules and duty of care

Visas and entry requirements

Entry requirements depend on the traveller's nationality, the purpose of the trip, the length of stay and connections, and they change. A coordinator is useful here as a careful checker, not as an adviser. The working rule for the seat:

• Check only official sources: the destination government's entry and visa pages, its embassy or consulate, and the traveller's own government's travel advice pages.
• Record the source page and the date checked in the trip file and the options memo.
• Send the traveller the official links; the traveller confirms the facts and completes and signs any application.
• Track dates the traveller gives (appointment, passport validity, application status) as reminders.
• Send anything unclear, such as work-related activities, long stays or previous refusals, to the traveller or your immigration adviser. The coordinator does not interpret immigration rules.

Duty of care stays with the company

Your obligations to travelling employees are decided by your company and your advisers, not handed to a coordinator. What the seat can do is make sure the decision-makers have the facts and that everyone knows where people are.

Passport and traveller data

A travel coordinator handles some of the most sensitive personal data in a company: passport numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, frequent flyer accounts, sometimes health or accessibility needs. Treat the seat like any other role with access to personal records, and design it so the data sits in systems you control.

Add three things to the paperwork: a confidentiality agreement signed before access, a line in your employee privacy notice that a contractor arranges travel and handles this data, and a retention rule for trip files and scans. Privacy law depends on where your travellers live and where data is accessed from; ask your counsel which rules apply to you, and write the answer into the data annex.

Sizing the seat

Hours per trip depend on how complex your trips are and how fast approvals come back, so size from your own pattern. The worksheet below shows the arithmetic with example inputs; replace them with your numbers after the first two weeks of timed work.

The hours above are example inputs to show the arithmetic, not benchmarks. Time the first two weeks of real trips and plan from those.

Travel rarely fills a full-time seat evenly, so many buyers combine it with calendar, inbox or event work in one seat.

Engagement models compared

Five ways to handle a company's business travel, with different cost units and different answers on who knows your travellers and who answers the phone at 2 a.m.

When you compare with a travel management company, ask each provider for its fee schedule in writing: which transactions carry a fee, whether changes and after-hours calls cost extra, and whether there is a minimum. Fee models differ enough that only your own quotes give a fair comparison. The combined model is common: the provider supplies the booking tool and the night line, the dedicated coordinator runs the tool, writes the memos and closes the receipts. For the difference between a dedicated person and a team you share, see dedicated team vs staff augmentation.

Total cost of ownership

BLS does not publish a separate figure for corporate travel coordinators, so the comparison below uses travel agents, the closest occupation in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Your local market for an in-house coordinator may sit above or below it.

Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Travel Agents, median pay May 2025 ($50,160 a year, $24.11 an hour); employer FICA rate from the IRS; BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for the benefits share. VA rate = our recruiting partner's published rate for administrative and operations roles, billed monthly in arrears for hours worked. Checked November 2026.

The cost that doesn't show on an invoice

The hidden line in most companies is travellers booking their own trips. Work it out with your own inputs:

The $60, 2 hours and 60 trips are example inputs, not market figures. Use your own payroll cost and a quick count of last quarter's trips.

SLAs and out-of-hours cover

One person works one shift. The honest service levels for a dedicated coordinator cover their working hours precisely and name a different route for the rest of the day. Write both into the agreement; travellers should never discover the gap at an airport.

Bracketed numbers are suggested starting targets for you to adjust, not market standards. Confirm them after a 30-day baseline.

Options for hours outside the shift

• Shift placement: set the shift to overlap your travellers' working day and early mornings, when most same-day changes happen. A coordinator in another time zone can cover your early hours before your office opens.
• After-hours route: the airline's app and rebooking tools, the hotel's front desk, and your travel management company's support line if you have one. Put them on page one of every itinerary.
• On-call window: for a critical trip, agree in advance with the vendor how a few extra hours outside the shift are booked and billed.

Disruption runbook

1. Confirm: check the airline or supplier's own status, not only an alert app.
2. Contact: tell the traveller what happened and that options are coming, in the channel your policy names.
3. Options: the airline's own rebooking first, then alternatives inside policy, with the hotel and ground transport knock-on effects.
4. Approve: the traveller chooses; any fee above the agreed amount goes to the budget owner.
5. Rebook: book, cancel what no longer fits (hotel night, car, meeting room), log credits and fees.
6. Reissue: new itinerary and calendar entries; tell the people the traveller was due to meet if asked to.
7. Close: note the cause, the time taken and the cost in the trip file for the monthly report.

KPIs

Measure what the coordinator controls: speed, accuracy, policy discipline and closure. Fares and delays depend on the market and the airlines, so they belong in the monthly report as context.

Run the first 30 days without targets, collect the numbers, then set targets from them.

Risk register

Vendor questionnaire: twelve questions

1. Does the coordinator work only for my company, during the hours I set?
2. Which travel backgrounds are candidates screened for: corporate travel desks, airline or hotel reservations, executive assistance with heavy travel?
3. Will candidates complete a booking exercise on a trip like ours before I meet them?
4. Which tools will candidates know: my booking tool, airline and hotel accounts, SAP Concur, Expensify, Ramp, Brex, TripIt?
5. Will the agreement confirm that the coordinator never pays with personal cards or accounts and never holds our card numbers?
6. How is out-of-hours work handled and billed if I need an on-call window for a critical trip?
7. What computer, internet and backup setup do candidates have, and what is the plan if either fails during a disruption?
8. How is traveller personal data protected on the coordinator's side: screen locks, encryption, no personal cloud storage?
9. Do I interview and choose the coordinator myself?
10. What is the hourly rate, how are hours tracked, and are there any per-booking or per-change charges?
11. Are there recruitment or setup fees? Is there an advance payment, and is it refundable?
12. What are the trial, notice and replacement terms, and how is leave covered during a busy travel month?

The booking test

A resume says "travel coordination"; a 60-minute exercise shows whether the person reads a policy, catches a timing problem and writes a clear memo. Use a made-up traveller and no real personal data.

• Task 1, options memo: a two-city trip with fixed meeting times, a one-page policy with a hotel cap and a booking window. The candidate sends three options in your memo format with the policy check filled in.
• Task 2, itinerary: five confirmation emails (flight, hotel, train, car, dinner) with one deliberate conflict, such as a check-in date one day off. The candidate builds the itinerary and flags the conflict.
• Task 3, disruption: the evening flight is cancelled with the traveller at the airport. The candidate writes the first message to the traveller and lists the next steps in order.
• Task 4, entry check: a traveller of a stated nationality going to a stated country. The candidate lists which official sources they would check and what they would send the traveller, without giving advice.

30/60/90-day onboarding

1. Days 1–7, access and policy: unique logins to the booking tool, airline and hotel accounts, expense tool and shared drive; password manager entries; the travel policy written or updated; approval matrix and memo template agreed; traveller profiles collected from the travellers.
2. Days 8–30, supervised trips: the coordinator researches and drafts every trip, the travel owner checks each booking before payment; every task timed for the sizing worksheet; the after-hours route printed on every itinerary.
3. Day 30 review: baseline numbers for memo time, approval time, errors and expense closure; service-level targets set from them; seat size confirmed.
4. Days 31–60, changes and expenses: the coordinator handles schedule changes within the agreed fee limits; expense reports and receipt matching added; the credit log started; first monthly travel report.
5. Days 61–90, full scope: group and event travel, loyalty and profile upkeep, the traveller register for duty of care; finance runs the first monthly reconciliation against trip files.
6. Day 90 review: KPI targets confirmed, policy gaps found during the quarter fixed, decision on extra hours, a second shift or combining travel with other office work.

Exit and red flags

On the last day

• Every login removed: booking tool, airline and hotel accounts, expense tool, shared drive, password manager entries rotated.
• Open trips listed with their status, upcoming changes and pending refunds.
• Credit log, traveller register and policy notes up to date in your drive.
• Any passport or visa scans deleted from working folders, as your retention rule says.
• Written confirmation that no traveller data remains on personal devices or accounts.
• Virtual cards issued for the coordinator's bookings closed or reassigned.

Red flags in proposals

• "We pay for the bookings and invoice you" from a provider that isn't a travel company: card control leaves your hands.
• Visa or immigration advice offered as part of the service.
• "Lowest fare guaranteed" or savings percentages without a basis.
• Requests for card numbers by email or for one shared login to your booking tool.
• No answer on out-of-hours disruptions, or a promise of 24/7 cover from a single person.

Requesting candidates

Requests sent through this site go to our recruiting partner, a managed VA agency:

1. Send the scope: travellers, trips a month, domestic or international mix, your booking and expense tools, and the hours you need covered.
2. Review the shortlist: candidates with travel coordination backgrounds, tested on a booking exercise where the role needs it, usually in about 2 business days.
3. Interview and choose: nothing is paid before you choose; billing is monthly in arrears for hours worked; a coordinator who isn't a fit is replaced at no extra cost.

The trade-offs: an agency costs more than a coordinator you recruit yourself on a job board, in exchange for screening, a dedicated person and replacement; the first month needs your time to write the policy and check bookings; after the 30-day trial a notice period applies; and one coordinator covers one shift, so plan the after-hours route. Before you sign any outsourcing agreement, run it past the outsourcing contract checklist. Companies that also schedule technicians or drivers can compare this file with the dispatcher virtual assistant file.