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Opinion

How to stop last-minute business travel turning into a headache

Garry Moroney, CEO at Roomex, discusses how brokers and finance professionals can prevent last-minute business travel from becoming costly and chaotic.

4 min read
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Garry Moroney CEO at Roomex
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Mortgage brokers and specialist finance professionals pride themselves on precision – whether part of a national network or operating as a one-person firm. But travel often remains an afterthought. And with UK air and rail fares rising sharply, and HMRC requiring expenses to be “granular and routinely auditable”, reacting late is becoming an expensive habit.

Whether it’s a site visit, a face-to-face client meeting, or a file review called at short notice, intermediaries are regularly on the move. These trips, often essential for maintaining lender relationships, satisfying compliance teams or progressing a complex case, are rarely convenient, and even less so when left to the last minute.

For instance, lender due diligence meetings are often requested with minimal notice, spot checks from network compliance teams can happen unexpectedly, and ad hoc file reviews may be triggered by documentation queries or internal quality checks.

There are also urgent site or client meetings that simply can’t be resolved remotely. All of these visits play a vital role in upholding standards and relationships, but their unpredictable nature makes them costly, disruptive, and harder to manage – especially for lean teams with limited admin support.

These visits play a vital role in upholding standards and relationships. But their unpredictable nature makes them costly, disruptive, and harder to manage, especially for lean teams with limited admin support.

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Recent Roomex findings underline just how common last-minute travel still is. More than half (58%) of brokerage staff still scramble for same-day or next-day tickets, more than two-thirds (71%) see non-compliant bookings slip through, and almost a third (29.5%) blame poor visibility for spiralling costs.

In a sector already navigating thin margins and growing administrative pressures, these reactive journeys quietly erode profit, oversight and morale. Volatile fares, limited availability and tighter scrutiny have turned the humble lender visit or compliance meeting into an outsized operational burden.

Time for a smarter approach

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What’s needed is a more structured, more practical approach, one that balances urgency with control and supports the people behind the processes. That means rethinking how travel is planned, paid for and tracked, whether you’re a sole trader or part of a national network.

Why the headache?

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Short-notice travel is rarely planned, but often necessary. Lenders may request a face-to-face meeting to push a case over the line. A compliance team might flag a file for in-person review. Clients might insist on a physical walkthrough of a property or development site.

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In these moments, fares are at their peak, preferred hotels are gone, and normal workflows get skipped. The result? Higher costs, missed approvals, and a messy paper trail, the very things regulators and lenders want to avoid.

Then there’s the admin fallout. Off-platform bookings add manual work, while finance teams (or the broker themselves) are left chasing receipts and reconciling costs. When staff use personal cards and wait weeks for reimbursement, it’s not just inconvenient, it’s a retention issue.

A simple playbook for better control

The good news? There are simple, accessible fixes that can help brokers and small firms absorb last-minute travel without the chaos.

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Set clear, simple policies, and surface them where bookings happen. A one-page policy with cost caps and approved suppliers is a good start. Some booking platforms make these rules visible at point-of-search, so they guide choices rather than sit unread on a shared drive.

Never make employees, or sole traders, carry travel costs up front. Single-use virtual cards or pre-loaded payment tools remove the need for staff to dip into personal funds and ensure every booking is trackable from the start.

Use a central booking platform, even for late trips. Whether it’s via a travel management company or an online tool, routing all travel through a single gateway ensures consistency. It means every fare has a timestamp, name and purpose, which helps defend spend when clients, lenders or HMRC ask the hard questions.

This isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about easing the pressure on the people doing the work and keeping business running smoothly.

The road (or rail) ahead

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Compliance scrutiny, lender expectations and cost pressures aren’t going anywhere. And while late travel will always be part of the job, the process around it doesn’t need to be painful.

The solution? Keep policies simple, fund trips through controlled payment methods, and track costs at source. With the right system in place, much of the heavy lifting can be automated – from surfacing policy-compliant fares to generating a full paper trail with zero hassle.

Last-minute travel may be unavoidable. Last-minute chaos isn’t.

Garry Moroney is CEO at Roomex

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