Corporate Travel Policy Guide for Companies in Saudi Arabia

A practical corporate travel policy tells employees how to plan, approve, book and expense a business trip, and sets out how the company looks after them while they travel. For a company in Saudi Arabia, it should cover scope, approvals, booking channels, travel standards, expenses, duty of care, data privacy, sustainability and reporting, written in plain language that travellers will actually read.

Here is how to build each part, with a short checklist at the end.

1. Purpose and scope

Open with one paragraph on why the policy exists: to keep travellers safe, use the travel budget well and make booking simple. Then define what it covers:

• Employees, contractors, board members and guests travelling at the company's expense.
• Domestic trips within the Kingdom and international travel.
• Conferences, exhibitions, training, project sites and client visits.
• Who owns the policy (often finance, HR or procurement), how exceptions are approved and how often it is reviewed.

2. Approval workflow

Keep approvals proportionate to the trip. A common model:

1. The traveller submits a request with purpose, dates, destination and estimated cost.
2. The line manager approves the business need.
3. Trips outside the standards, such as a higher class of travel or a higher-risk destination, need a second approval from a senior manager or the travel risk owner.
4. Booking happens only after approval, through the approved channel.

Set target booking lead times, and an urgent route for trips that cannot wait.

3. Booking channels

Decide where trips may be booked: through a travel management company (TMC), an online booking tool, or both. One approved channel means the company knows where its travellers are, which matters as much for safety as for budget. Say whether personal bookings are allowed and how loyalty schemes are treated, and list preferred airlines and hotels if you have them.

4. Class of travel and hotel standards

These are policy choices for your company, not fixed rules. Typical decisions:

• Cabin class by flight length, overnight flights or seniority, or one standard for all staff.
• Whether executives and official delegations follow a separate standard.
• Hotel category, location close to the meeting venue or site, and safety criteria such as secure access.
• Ground transport: company cars, approved transfers or car rental, and whether staff may drive abroad.

Keep any spending limits in a separate schedule that finance updates each year, so the policy itself does not date.

5. Per diems and expenses

Choose between a daily allowance (per diem), reimbursement of actual costs, or a mix, and say what each covers, such as meals, local transport and connectivity. Then specify:

• Which receipts and tax invoices are required.
• Expenses that are never reimbursed.
• Deadlines for claims and how cash advances are settled.
• How foreign-currency spending is converted.

6. Duty of care and travel risk management

Duty of care means the company takes reasonable steps to protect its people when they travel for work. The international reference is ISO 31030:2021, Travel risk management: Guidance for organizations. ISO describes it as guidance on managing the risks that travel poses to an organisation and its travellers, with a structured approach to developing, implementing, evaluating and reviewing a travel risk management policy and programme, including risk assessment, prevention and mitigation. It applies to organisations of any type and size.

Using ISO 31030 as a framework usually means:

• Assessing each destination before approval, with extra steps for higher-risk trips.
• Briefing travellers on health, security and local laws before departure.
• Knowing where travellers are, using booking data from the approved channel.
• Keeping a tested plan for incidents, illness and evacuation.
• Reviewing incidents and updating the policy.

7. Traveller safety and emergency contacts

• A 24/7 emergency number for travellers, and a named team that answers it.
• Travel insurance that covers medical treatment abroad. The World Health Organization advises comprehensive travel insurance and declaring underlying health conditions to insurers.
• Pre-travel health advice where needed: WHO suggests a travel health consultation preferably 4 to 8 weeks before departure.
• The nearest embassy or consulate of each traveller's own country, since teams often hold different passports.
• Planned support for travellers with health conditions or disabilities, and for anyone travelling alone to remote sites.
• What to do if a flight is disrupted, a passport is lost or someone falls ill.

8. Data and privacy

A travel programme handles passport copies, contact details, itineraries and sometimes health information. In Saudi Arabia, the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), published on SDAIA's National Data Governance Platform, sets the obligations for those who process personal data. Your policy should say what traveller data is collected, who can see it, how long it is kept and which suppliers receive it, and your legal team should confirm it meets the law. Ask your TMC how it protects that data.

9. Sustainability

A policy can cut unnecessary travel without hurting the business. Ask whether a meeting could be virtual, combine trips to the same city, prefer direct routes where practical, and consider hotels with credible environmental practices. If you report emissions, ask your TMC whether it can share trip data in a format your sustainability team can use.

10. Reporting and KPIs

What you measure, you can improve. Useful indicators include:

• Spend by department, route and supplier.
• Policy compliance: the share of trips booked through the approved channel and within standards.
• Booking lead time, changes and unused tickets.
• Savings against the fares and rates offered.
• Traveller satisfaction and reported incidents.

A short checklist

• Purpose, scope and policy owner written down.
• Approval steps and exception route defined.
• One approved booking channel.
• Class of travel and hotel standards agreed.
• Per diem or expense rules, with a separate limits schedule.
• Travel risk assessment aligned with ISO 31030.
• 24/7 emergency contact and insurance in place.
• Traveller data handling checked against the PDPL.
• Sustainability guidance included.
• KPIs and a yearly review date set.

How a travel management company helps

A TMC turns the policy into daily practice: it books within your standards, follows your approvals, keeps traveller details in one place and reports on spend and compliance. Mosook's corporate travel service follows a four-step engagement: assess, design, execute and report. Our team builds policies, preferred-supplier lists and approval flows tailored to your structure, coordinates flights, hotels, transfers, conferences and executive visits, and reports on spend, savings, compliance and traveller experience. Small and medium enterprises get a single point of contact for every trip.

Frequently asked questions

Does a small company need a written travel policy?

Yes. Even a two-page policy that covers approvals, booking, expenses and emergency contacts prevents disputes and helps you look after travellers. You can expand it as the company grows.

What is ISO 31030?

ISO 31030:2021 is the International Organization for Standardization's guidance on travel risk management. It helps organisations of any size build a policy and programme to assess and reduce the risks of work travel to the organisation and its travellers.

Should the policy include per diem amounts?

It is better to set out the rules in the policy and keep amounts in a separate schedule that finance reviews each year, so the policy does not need rewriting whenever limits change.

Can a travel management company help write our policy?

Yes. Mosook's corporate team designs policies, preferred-supplier lists and approval flows around each client's structure, then applies them to every booking.

Talk to our corporate team

If you are writing or updating your company's travel policy, our team can help you put it into practice. Learn about our corporate travel services and, for senior executives and official delegations, our delegation and VIP travel. When you are ready, talk to an account manager.

Sources

• ISO 31030:2021 Travel risk management: Guidance for organizations, International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
• ISO 31030:2021: Managing travel risks, ISO/TC 262 Risk management
• Personal Data Protection Law, Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA)
• Travel and health, World Health Organization