5 Travel and Expense Management Tips for Athletes

Traveling is not something inexpensive and when it comes to certain professions, it becomes a lot more costly. The same is the case with athletes and sportsmen. They have a lot of things to spend on. Furthermore, their participation also costs a lot of money. In addition to this, they will travel frequently, and thus, the flight tickets and meals and whatnot.

So how can they manage their expenses?

Before looking for ways to reduce expenses, we should look at the aspects that cost a lot.

1. First of all, there is a participation fee that all the athletes have to pay when they wish to participate in an event.
2. Then there are expenses regarding clothing. According to the estimates, families spend around 671 on a single athlete of their family. And this amount includes their registration cost and the expense of their uniform.
3. And when they are traveling, they need to pay for their flights, accommodation and taxi fare, etc.
4. After this, there are expenses for meals. They have to eat special meals that also cost some amount.

So how will they do so?

1 – Making use of SAP concur and alternatives

One of the ways for athletes to save a lot of their money is by using SAP concur or its alternatives. You can read about their details at blog.happay.com, be sure to visit their website and you will get all the information that you will need about SAP concur and what else you need to do.

So what it is and what can it do to save your money? This is a software platform that automates traveling solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises.

This software combines the data regarding travel and expenses and all other payments on one platform. Thus, you will be able to have seamless integration. This will save you a lot of time and cost. Furthermore, it also helps businesses to manage their expense costs.

So athletes can surely make use of such platforms and save some amount. This is especially handy for small teams who do not have important sponsors.

2 – Make yourself a reward member of the hotel

If you are an athlete with a limited budget and you travel for events, make sure to choose one hotel. If you stay in a hotel and often go there, they will make you a reward member by themselves. And hotels and multinational chains have rewards and other such programs for their special customers.

So if you are an athlete and you always choose to stay in one hotel, you will get a lot of benefits. Apart from being a reward member, you can also make friends with the staff of the hotel. So once you are interacting nicely with the staff, they will tell you about the ongoing discount offers. In this way, you will get more discount even if you are unaware of the offer.

Likewise, the staff will be nice to you and will offer you nice meals. If there is an option of sending complimentary dishes, you will get that too. This is the benefit of becoming a loyal customer to someone.

3 – Do not go overboard on anything

Whether you are doing individual purchases or buying team apparel, you should never go over the board.

When you are buying apparel, different teams will give you multiple options. Their options might include, shirts, hats, sweatshirts, and even backpacks and key rings. So will you do all that? You should never do so. All of this cost a lot and you will disturb your budget greatly. Therefore, if you are tight on budget, you should remain calm and think carefully before making the purchase.

Although it might look nice to have a matching sweatshirt, pants and hats, and even backpacks but if you are buying it in different colors, you should not waste that much amount. Because there is no need to do so. Uniform is important but too many extra uniforms are only a waste of your hard-earned money.

4 – Taking care of your own meals

Everyone is aware of the fact that athletes have a special diet plan. Therefore, only this section is going to cost you a heavy sum. So how will you save money here?

One thing you should know is that if you are hiring a chef who will cook special meals for you and is always ready for your order, you will have to pay him a lot of money to do his job. Because you are customizing everything.

So what will you do then?

Instead of hiring a chef, what you can do is prepare your own meals. Although it might be a bit difficult considering your practice sessions but if you are trying to save money, you can try this. If you have a complete team, you can distribute the duties among them. When everyone is doing something, the workload will reduce and you will be able to finish it quickly.

You have your personal dietician. You can always ask him for plans. Thus, with the help of your dietician and whole group work, you will not only have a nice home-cooked meal but also save a lot of money.

5 – Keep a separate emergency fund

When you receive funding for your participation and everything else, you should separate some amount immediately. For example, if you have 10,000 dollars, you can keep $3000 separate and plan your budget with only 7000 dollars. The 3000 dollars will be our emergency fund.

So when everything is going well, you will have the $3000 with you for the next event. And if in case, there is a problem with anything, you will still have some money to use. So you will not disturb your whole budget but only the emergency fund.

These are some of the ways that can save a lot of amount in the longer run.