How CLC Lodging is supporting small businesses

The holidays are just around the corner, and you know what that means—a great opportunity to support businesses around the country. At CLC Lodging, we’re especially excited to celebrate Small Business Saturday, which encourages shoppers to support small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in their communities. CLC Lodging offers a wide range of travel management solutions that can flex to meet the lodging needs of small and medium-sized companies.

Corpay, CLC’s parent company, recently completed a survey of SMBs in the United States. Here are some insights from the survey—and just a few of the ways that CLC supports these businesses. 

1. SMB’s number 1 focus is finding and retaining customers.

SMBs are constantly aiming to bring their solutions and products to more customers. Reaching more customers increases revenue, which supports the growth of SMBs by enabling them to hire more employees and invest more in developing their products. Simply put, more growth means a better service for customers.

Simplifying expense management ensures that SMBs stay customer-focused. CLC Lodging simplifies lodging program management so that travel managers and other in-house administrators can focus on their business. Our streamlined lodging management portal gives businesses total insight into their lodging spend. CLC members can find and review all invoices in one place, making reconciliation faster and more accurate. Plus, we conduct a comprehensive audit of 100% of hotel invoices to help prevent unauthorized charges and inaccurate rates. 

2. More than 60% of SMBs would like to provide employees with a business expense card.

Business expense cards are credit cards that employees can use for business- or travel-related expenses. Corporate expense cards give companies more control over their employees’ spending, which is especially important for companies with teams that travel. Administrators can set pre-approved spending limits on business expense cards, minimizing reimbursement hassles and frustration for both the company and the employee.

The Trip Card, CLC’s virtual per diem option, allows businesses to assign a fixed amount of expense money onto a virtual card for employees to use on travel-related costs like meals and fuel. Travelers receive a virtual version of the Trip Card which they can access from any device and start using instantly, which means they no longer need to use their personal card for travel-related expenses.

CLC members can also increase savings and control costs by applying for a purchasing card. This solution is available for qualifying members to pay for their CLC Lodging bill and other business expenses. 

3. Nearly 40% of SMBs with traveling employees don’t have a formal travel solution.

Business travel isn’t reserved for huge corporations. Before the COVD-19 pandemic, a survey reported that 55% of small business owners travel at least once a month for work, with 60% of those travelers spending over three nights on the road per month. Smaller in-house teams that do not have the time and resources can make managing travel, especially finding the best rates and negotiating with hotels, a lot more difficult. 

CLC members gain access to pre-negotiated and discounted rates at up to 45,000 hotels. Our lodging experts continually negotiate lodging costs to get our members consistently lower rates. CLC Network hotels also give members flexible cancellation policies, eliminate pre-payment hassles and offer 24-hour length of stay from the time you check-in  benefits. 

4. 64% of SMBs shop annually for business payment solutions.

SMBs understand the value of streamlined business payment solutions, and are often in the market for a better way to pay. Again, however, the time it takes to shop for a new business payment solution takes away from valuable time employees could be spending serving customers or developing other aspects of the business.

In addition to our lodging solutions, virtual per diem options, CLC Lodging offers a variety of other expense management solutions to control all business and travel payments. CLC’s payroll card offers hotels and clients a cost-effective, electronic way to pay employees, And streamlining bill payments is easy with our free Corpay One solution.

Learn more about how CLC Lodging can support your SMB. Visit clclodging.com to get started.