If the long check-in lines, bad in-flight meals and terrible in-room coffee aren’t reasons enough to dislike business travel, here’s another one: small to mid-sized businesses don’t have the same clout as multinational corporations when it comes to negotiating prices with travel vendors.

“The big frustration for small businesses is they can’t get the great deals that larger businesses can because they don’t have the volume behind them,” says Chris McGinnis, author of The Unofficial Business Traveler’s Pocket Guide and resident business travel expert at the Best Western hotel chain’s new blog, YouMustBeTrippin.com. “Unfortunately,” says McGinnis, “you’ve got to go out and look for those deals on your own.”

Yes, saving money on business travel takes effort, but less than you might think. Here are McGinnis’s top tips on how to rein in your company’s travel expenses.

• Don’t stay downtown. Stay at a hotel in the suburbs that’s hungrier for your business, and therefore more open to negotiating lower rates. If possible, find a hotel on a commuter train line. That way, says McGinnis, “You can just jump on a train to get in and out of the city, which saves you from having to get a rental car.”

• Find out whether it’s more cost-effective to fly into a smaller nearby airport. “It could be cheaper to fly into Long Beach and rent a car than to fly into LAX,” says McGinnis. He suggests always searching for flights by region, rather than city, to avoid missing out on savings gems.

• Try to book all travel-related expenses on one credit card, to be able to look at expenses with a historical perspective. For example, if one employee has a much cheaper trip to Edmonton than another, analyze what cost-savings measures she took that her counterpart didn’t, and implement her best practices as part of a company-wide travel policy.

• Enlist one person who’s good at negotiating to book all travel arrangements for all staff. For example, if you’re a very small shop, see if the employee in the example above is open to doing all the travel booking. If your company has an administrative assistant or receptionist who has more time to make travel arrangements, take the time to teach them best practices.

• If you and/or your employees travel to the same city a lot, try to stay at the same hotel each time to be in a better position to negotiate a “frequent guest” discount.

• Before booking flights, hotels and rental cars, check opaque sites like HotWire.com and Priceline.com. You can browse by price, and only see which company each item is with when you click through to book.

• Choose hotels that offer things for free, like high-speed Internet access and breakfast. “If you’re traveling in a group, you’re going to save your company $40 to $50 right off the bat if you’re staying somewhere that includes breakfast,” says McGinnis. —By Annette Bourdeau

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