A travel policy has to answer two questions that pull against each other: what is an employee entitled to, and what happens when the sensible choice is outside that. Policies spend almost all their words on the first and almost none on the second.
Use the sections below as a skeleton. Anything in square brackets is a decision your organisation has to make — surfacing those decisions is the point of a template, not making them for you.
One general caution: a travel policy touches tax treatment and employment terms. Have the per diem, reimbursement and GST sections read by your finance and tax advisers before it is published.
1. Scope and eligibility
Grade-based entitlement is the norm and the source of most disputes, because grade and trip purpose do not always agree.
- Which employees the policy covers — [grade bands, employment type, contractors, candidates, guests]
- Domestic and international treated separately, or one set of rules
- Who may book on behalf of someone else, and for whom
- How non-employee travel is handled — [candidates, auditors, board members, customers]
- What happens when trip purpose justifies more than grade allows, and who may authorise it
2. Booking channel
The clause most often left out, and the one that determines whether any of the rest is enforceable.
- Which channel is mandated — [booking tool, travel desk, appointed agency]
- Whether direct booking is permitted at all, and in what circumstances
- What happens to a claim for a trip booked outside the mandated channel
- Who may approve an exception, and before or after the fact
- That bookings outside the channel are invisible for duty-of-care purposes — state it plainly, because it is the real reason the rule exists
3. Air travel
- Cabin class by [grade] and by [flight duration], stated as a ceiling not an entitlement
- Advance purchase expectation — [days] before departure, and what justifies breaking it
- Whether the lowest logical fare must be taken, and how "logical" is defined — [connections, layover length, arrival time, airport]
- Treatment of refundable versus non-refundable fares, by trip certainty
- Ancillaries: baggage, seat selection, meals — [reimbursable or not]
- Airline loyalty: whether personal accrual on company travel is permitted
- Whether a carrier preference or negotiated fare must be used where available
4. Hotels
- Nightly ceiling by [city tier], reviewed [how often] — a single national cap is the commonest failure
- Whether the ceiling is room rate only or includes taxes and fees — say which
- Preferred properties or rate programmes, and whether they are mandatory
- What is in scope beyond the room — [breakfast, internet, laundry, minibar]
- Extended-stay and serviced-apartment threshold — beyond [n] nights
- Safety floor: what makes a property acceptable regardless of price
5. Ground transport
Usually the thinnest section in a travel policy, and the one that generates the most small claims.
- Airport transfers — [permitted mode, cap, whether pre-booking is required]
- Local transport at destination — [ride-hailing, rental, company vendor]
- Self-drive and personal-vehicle use, and the per-kilometre rate if allowed
- Whether intercity travel by road requires separate approval
- How this interacts with the employee transport programme if the traveller is also a commuter — and which budget each lands in
6. Approvals
- Pre-trip approval threshold — [value, destination, class, days to departure]
- Who approves, and who approves when they are unavailable
- Which exceptions may be auto-approved and which must be seen by a human
- Whether the approver sees the cost of the alternative they are declining
- A stated turnaround expectation — an approval step with no SLA becomes the reason people book direct
7. Per diem and expenses
Have this section reviewed for tax treatment before publication; the structure below is the shape, not the amounts.
- Per diem by [city tier / country band], and whether it is paid regardless of spend
- What per diem is deemed to cover, itemised, so it is not claimed twice
- Receipt threshold — above [amount] a receipt is required
- Submission deadline, and what happens to a late claim
- Non-reimbursable list, written out — [fines, personal entertainment, companion travel, upgrades]
- Currency and exchange-rate basis for international claims
8. GST and invoicing
India-specific, routinely omitted, and directly worth money.
- That the company GSTIN must be captured at the point of booking, not after
- That invoices must be raised to the company, not to the traveller
- Who is accountable when a non-compliant invoice means credit cannot be claimed
- How hotel invoices raised in another state are handled
- Which documents must be attached to a claim for it to be processed
9. Duty of care
- That the company will know where travellers are, and the basis on which it knows
- Pre-departure risk briefing — for which destinations, issued by whom
- A single escalation contact for incidents, reachable outside office hours
- Insurance in force, what it covers, and how to invoke it
- High-risk destinations: who authorises travel, and what additional measures apply
- Expectations for travel by a lone female employee, and at night — consistent with the transport policy rather than contradicting it
10. Compliance and review
- What is reported, to whom, and how often — [leakage, advance purchase, exceptions, cost per trip]
- Consequence of repeated non-compliance, stated rather than implied
- Policy owner and review cycle — a travel policy with no owner is a travel policy nobody updates
- Date of last review on the document itself
The clauses most often missing
From policies we have read alongside a programme. Each one is a dispute waiting to happen.
- No mandated booking channel — so nothing else in the policy can be enforced
- A single national hotel cap, which is simultaneously too high and too low
- No definition of "lowest logical fare", leaving it to be argued per booking
- No GSTIN capture rule, so input credit is lost silently
- No approval turnaround expectation, which is what drives booking outside the channel
- Ground transport covered in one line, generating most of the small-claim volume
- No stated interaction with the employee transport programme, so costs land in whichever budget is nearest