Case Study: Bolt

How Bolt scaled its travel for work with TravelPerk

Operating in over 600 cities across 50 countries, Bolt aims to reduce the need for private cars worldwide. From Cape Town to Copenhagen, Bolt offers a better alternative to every purpose a private car serves: ride-hailing, car rental services, scooter and e-bike sharing, and food and grocery delivery.

Founded in 2013, Bolt's team has grown rapidly. Headquartered in Estonia, the organization has expanded to 51 offices worldwide, including major hubs in Germany, Romania, and Poland. As Bolt ventured into new markets, traveling for work became essential to its operations.

“As the company keeps scaling, business travel helps us keep everything running smoothly, build new relationships, and strengthen our presence in all these new markets.”

Laura Ringbom, Workplace Experience Manager for Sweden and The Netherlands

Bolt staff trips include inter-office meetings, regional summits, and annual group events to stay connected and inspire collaboration. In 2018, Bolt was in an exciting period of hypergrowth. As the team grew rapidly, it became clear that they needed to ditch inefficient, manual processes and find a better way to book their work trips.

Hyper-efficiency for hypergrowth

Managing an increasing number of travelers presented many challenges, from coordinating itineraries to optimizing travel budgets. These years of hypergrowth and extensive travel for work required the team to be hyper efficient. Bolt's leadership was looking for a solution to simplify their workflows and decided TravelPerk could optimize their work travel operations.

"Automating the travel booking process with TravelPerk was a total game-changer, making it way easier to scale and keep up with the needs of our growing team."

Kertu Leetus, Regional Workplace Experience Manager and Travel Manager

TravelPerk streamlined the booking process by allowing travelers to book their itineraries in just a few clicks. Rather than scanning several websites, TravelPerk gives Bolt's employees a single user-friendly platform where they can browse an extensive inventory of accommodations, flights, and ground transportation.

"The user experience is simple and easy to navigate, booking travel is straightforward for our team. It saves time and makes the whole process smooth."

Kerttu Leetus, Regional Workplace Experienc Manager and Travel Manager

With TravelPerk, travel managers can integrate company policies into the booking process. In just a few minutes, users can outline parameters that mean employee searches always generate compliant options. These trips can be instantly greenlit, saving department leaders from drowning in travel requests and meaning employees can secure the best price for their plans. But if an itinerary requires an out-of-policy element, it is flagged for approval and sent instantly to the relevant team members.

From mundane manual tasks to easy integrations

Today, Bolt employs over 4,000 people across five continents. Team members have taken 27,000 work trips in the past seven years and travel 7,000 times a year on average. In 2024, Bolt booked around 11,000 services for 2000+ staff members traveling for work.

However, the benefits of TravelPerk extend far beyond the booking process. TravelPerk allows companies to integrate with various platforms and apps to streamline other work travel workflows. For example, Bolt uses the AI platform Workday for its HR needs. Initially, Bolt's tech team connected Workday and TravelPerk via API. Integrating Workday into TravelPerk made their admin easier thanks to an automatic employee data process. Keen to evolve and improve functionality for their clients, TravelPerk integrated fully with Workday, simplifying Bolt's HR tasks even further.

"The HR integration with Workday has been a big plus. The employee data flow works efficiently, so there's no need for manual updates, and everything stays in sync."

Kerttu Leetus, Regional Workplace Experience Manager and Travel Manager

Integrations that automate tedious manual tasks stop data entry errors and save administrators time. Bolt's teams no longer have to cross-reference employees' information across systems, giving them time to focus on other tasks.

Comprehensive reports boost compliance

Kerttu finds TravelPerk's detailed reports invaluable when assessing Bolt employees' travel data. Filters let users easily adjust reports to explore costs by department, destination, or employee.

"New filtering options give us more flexibility in analyzing travel data, which helps us get a better overview of trends and spending."

Kerttu Leetus, Regional Workplace Experience Manager and Travel Manager

Greater visibility means Bolt can better understand staff travel habits and preferences and optimize their travel policy to reflect this. Having comprehensive data to hand enables Kerttu and Laura to increase their travelers' well-being and improve compliance.

"We aim to balance finding competitive prices with the flexibility to adjust our selections based on employee feedback."

Laura Ringbom, Workplace Experience Manager for Sweden and The Netherlands

Utilizing TravelPerk's integrated policies and automated approvals has significantly impacted Bolt's bottom line. Since partnering with TravelPerk, the team has reduced its travel spend by 10%. Plus, thanks to comprehensive reporting and support, it's easier to spot where future savings can be made.

Tailored support for Bolt’s work travel

Since the beginning of Bolt's partnership with TravelPerk, dedicated account managers have been on hand to support their journey. From providing training to actioning the team's feedback to enhance functionality and add features. TravelPerk's teams also offer round-the-clock care. Travelers can get assistance 24/7, 365 days a year, via email, phone, or chat.

"Thank you to account managers. We appreciate all the improvements that have been made upon our request."

Kerttu Leetus, Regional Workplace Experience Manager and Travel Manager

By using TravelPerk to implement automation and optimize their processes, Bolt could scale their work travel program without the stress. With Bolt's success still on the rise, TravelPerk's solutions continue to free up time for their staff to focus on more important tasks.

"With Bolt growing so fast, it's more important than ever that we focus on scalable solutions so we can move quickly without getting stuck on small processes. It's great to see TravelPerk with the same mindset, and we're looking forward to what comes next!"

Laura Ringbom, Workplace Experience Manager for Sweden and The Netherlands