A distinct feature of business travel in the home building materials and new materials industry is that travel destinations are determined by industries and projects, rather than by cities.Production bases, raw material origins, industrial parks, county-level stores, suburban construction sites, and customer sites are the actual "business frontlines" where employees travel most frequently.
Meanwhile, the industry relies heavily on channel expansion and project delivery. Investment promotion requires continuous market sinking; engineering projects demand long-term on-site presence; and new material products often require multiple round trips from sample delivery and testing to on-site commissioning. Coupled with peak home improvement seasons, industry exhibitions, and centralized investment promotion drives, corporate travel is characterized by scattered destinations, varying cycle lengths, frequent itinerary changes, and costs deeply tied to specific projects.
As a result, enterprises face far more than just "how to book flights and hotels". They must address issues such as how to ensure travel services for non-standard destinations, how to manage long-term on-site assignments, how to account for project-based travel costs, and how to balance employee experience with compliance for frontline travel.This is also the core difference between travel management in the home building materials and new materials industry and ordinary business travel management.
I. Four Unique Scenarios of Business Travel in the Industry
01｜Sinking Business Frontlines Bring Challenges in Booking, Accommodation and Transportation for Non-Standard Destinations
Factories, industrial parks and raw material bases are mostly located in suburban and county-level areas. Engineering projects extend to urban peripheries, and distribution networks further sink to counties and even townships.
Compared with urban central business districts, these destinations have relatively scattered hotel and car rental resources, leading to difficulties in room booking, last-mile transfers, and insufficient compliant travel options.
For engineering and technical personnel on long-term assignments, additional needs arise such as extended stays, staff rotation, and periodic return trips. The traditional ad-hoc procurement model can hardly balance efficiency, cost control and employee experience.
02｜Parallel Scenarios of Investment Promotion, Engineering and Technology Result in Fragmented Yet Continuous Travel
Channel investment promotion is not a one-time visit — it is accompanied by store inspections, opening support, routine patrols and activity assistance. Engineering projects also go through multiple phases: bid survey, construction mobilization, on-site coordination, and acceptance delivery.
For new material enterprises, multiple round trips are common for customer visits, sample testing and on-site commissioning.
Therefore, industry travel features both "multi-city continuous visits across one province" and "long-term on-site assignments with temporary responses", placing higher demands on the flexibility of resource matching and management rules.
03｜Travel Follows Projects, Yet Costs Can Hardly Be Allocated to Specific Projects
Engineering projects, new material customer pilots, and regional investment promotion all require continuous travel cost investment.
However, traditional travel management usually tracks expenses by employee and department, making it difficult to further associate costs with specific projects, customers, orders or regions.
Enterprises can see overall travel expenditure, but cannot quickly determine how much each project costs, which region has the highest investment promotion input, or whether customer service investment is reasonable.
How to transform travel expenses from "departmental overhead" into traceable project operating costs has become a key issue for refined management in the industry.
04｜Long-Term Off-Site Frontline Staff Create a Trade-off Between Experience and Control
Engineering, technical, after-sales and channel personnel are long dispersed across project sites and market frontlines, with frequent travel, long-term on-site stays and last-minute departures as the norm.
The traditional advance payment and reimbursement model easily causes capital occupation and cumbersome invoice management. Over-reliance on manual review, meanwhile, makes it difficult to balance travel standard enforcement, expense compliance and travel efficiency.
What enterprises need is a travel management system that enables convenient travel for employees while maintaining effective management oversight.
II. FANJIA Business Travel: Building Refined Travel Management Around Industry Scenarios
Targeting the industry's characteristics of sinking destinations, diverse scenarios, prominent project-based demands and frequent on-site assignments, FANJIA Business Travel optimizes travel management from the dimensions of resources, scenario services, cost control and payment management, to truly align travel management with business operations.
1. Full Resource Coverage for Sinking Scenarios to Solve Non-Standard Destination Guarantee Challenges
Focusing on high-frequency destinations such as production bases, industrial parks, engineering projects and county-level markets, Fanja integrates over 2 million hotel resources worldwide, covering third- and fourth-tier cities and county-level markets across China, and provides matching accommodation and car rental services around factories and project sites.
For long-term on-site projects, we offer extended-stay management solutions to handle room extensions, staff rotation and billing in a unified manner.
Enterprise-negotiated hotels near factories and project sites can also be connected and managed in batches through FANJIA's Hotel Ebooking System, realizing online management of negotiated rate maintenance, room inventory control and bill settlement, and reducing manual communication and reconciliation work for administrative teams.
2. Customized Travel Rules by Business Scenario to Adapt to Full-Position Travel Needs
Differentiated travel rules and services are set for scenarios such as investment promotion, engineering, technology, after-sales and industry exhibitions:
· Investment & expansion: Supports multi-city continuous itinerary planning with real-time travel standard verification, adapting to the travel mode of "multi-city expansion across counties in one province".
· Engineering on-site assignments: Sets long-stay travel standards and accommodation cycle rules, supports room extension and change requests, balancing on-site flexibility and cost control.
· Technical & after-sales service: Provides 24/7 customer service and emergency ticketing services to quickly respond to temporary on-site travel demands.
· Exhibitions & distributor conferences: Supports batch coordination of flights, hotels and car rentals, and locks in peak-season resources in advance to handle concentrated travel demands.
3. Shifting from "Expense Reimbursement" to "Project Accounting" to Clarify Every Travel Investment
Travel expenses are associated with business dimensions such as projects, customers, orders and regions, enabling travel costs to be according to business ownership.
Managers can further grasp travel investment across different projects, regions and customers, providing data support for business decisions such as project cost accounting, profit analysis and investment promotion input evaluation.
Enterprises can not only know "how much is spent on travel", but also understand "which project, customer and region the money is spent on".
4. Unified Payment and Expense Management to Reduce Burdens on Both Frontline Staff and Finance Teams
Through corporate unified payment, employee personal advances are reduced. Combined with unified billing, invoicing and expense management, manual reconciliation costs for the finance team are lowered.
Meanwhile, through travel standards, approval rules and itinerary management, pre-consumption control, in-process supervision and post-event analysis are realized, controlling costs while improving the travel experience of field and on-site personnel.
III. Industry Practices: How Travel Management Adapts to Different Business Scenarios
Case 1: A National Home Building Materials Enterprise
Enterprise Pain Points:
The enterprise's distributor network covers nearly a thousand counties across China. Its investment promotion and terminal support teams carry out store opening support, activity coaching and store patrol guidance all year round, facing problems such as multi-city continuous travel, scattered destinations and frequent itinerary adjustments.
Under the original model, employees booked through multiple channels, and travel standards relied on manual review. Travel expenses could not be accurately allocated by region or investment project, and frontline staff faced the dual problems of advance payment and long reimbursement cycles.
FANJIA Solution:
Built a unified travel booking platform covering county-level hotel and car rental resources; set differentiated travel standards for investment promotion and supervision positions with automatic verification at the booking end; realized expense allocation through the dual dimensions of "investment promotion region + support project"; and supported corporate unified payment to reduce employee advances.
Implementation Results:
investment promotion input evaluation. The travel and reimbursement experience of frontline staff has been improved.
Case 2: A Large Home New Materials Enterprise
Enterprise Pain Points:
The enterprise operates multiple production bases and new material industrial parks, with technical, engineering and quality personnel stationed on site for long periods. It has also signed contracts with hundreds of negotiated hotels near various factories and project sites.
Under the original model, negotiated rates, room inventory and billing relied on manual maintenance. Staff rotation at on-site projects also brought challenges in accommodation, transportation arrangement and expense accounting.
FANJIA Solution:
Connected and managed local negotiated hotels in batches through FANJIA's Hotel Ebooking System, realizing online management of negotiated rates, room inventory and settlement. Provided long-stay room management solutions for long-cycle projects, and allocated travel expenses by dimensions such as engineering projects and production bases. Meanwhile, implemented corporate unified payment to reduce employee advances.
Implementation Results:
More than 80% of local negotiated hotels have been brought under online management. The efficiency of accommodation and itinerary management for long-stay projects has been improved. Project travel costs realize full-cycle tracking, and financial accounting efficiency and employee travel experience have been simultaneously enhanced.
IV.Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1: How should engineering on-site travel be managed for home building materials and new materials enterprises?
Engineering on-site assignments usually feature long cycles, frequent staff rotation and constantly changing accommodation needs. Enterprises can set long-stay travel standards and accommodation cycle rules for on-site projects, and manage extended stays, room changes, staff rotation and return trips in a unified manner. This not only reduces repeated bookings and employee advances, but also helps enterprises control long-term accommodation costs.
Q2: How can travel expenses be accounted for by project, customer or region?
Travel applications and bookings can be associated with business dimensions such as projects, customers, orders and regions, so that expenses for flights, hotels and car rentals can be accumulated according to business ownership. For scenarios such as engineering projects, new material customer pilots and regional investment promotion, this project-based accounting method helps enterprises further analyze travel investment and project costs.
Q3: What should home building materials and new materials enterprises focus on when selecting a travel management service provider?
It is recommended to focus on four aspects: resource coverage in sinking markets, long-stay on-site service capabilities, project-based expense management capabilities, and corporate unified payment and settlement capabilities.
For the home building materials and new materials industry, a travel management service provider should not only solve the problem of "availability", but more importantly address the needs of "stable accommodation, effective management and clear accounting".
From "following business operations" to "accounting for every trip", travel management is evolving from a simple administrative task to an integral part of corporate operation management.
FANJIA Business Travel will continue to focus on the real business scenarios of the home building materials and new materials industry, and help enterprises achieve more precise travel management, clearer cost accounting and more valuable travel investment through premium travel resources, digital management and professional services.
