Travel for New Hires and Onboarding

How companies handle travel for people who have not started yet — onboarding fly-ins, booking before day one, what gets reimbursed, interns, and remote new hires. Answered independently.

Travel for someone who has not officially started yet sits in an awkward gap — no corporate card, no profile, sometimes no employee record. Most answers online are vendor or generic HR content. Here is how it actually works, on the practical side.

General information — rules and policies change. Confirm current specifics with the relevant authority (your company, the airline, the government) or a professional. Where a public rule applies, its primary source is linked.

What is onboarding travel?

Onboarding travel is a trip a company arranges for a new employee around their start — most often flying a remote or distributed hire to headquarters or a team hub for their first days or weeks, to meet the team, get set up, and absorb the culture in person before returning to work remotely. It has become common as distributed teams grew: the in-person start is how you build the relationships and context that are hard to form over video. It can also cover a new-hire cohort brought together for a shared orientation, or a fly-in for a team an employee will work with closely.

How do I handle travel for a new employee?

The friction is that a brand-new hire usually has no corporate card, no booking-tool profile, and sometimes no employee record yet, so the clean approaches are to book it for them centrally (the company or a coordinator arranges and pays for flights and hotel directly, which is easiest on the new person) or to have them book and expense it with clear guidance and a promise of prompt reimbursement. Whichever you choose, send a simple pre-trip note covering what is booked or what to book, what the caps are, what is covered, and how reimbursement works — a new hire should not be guessing the policy in their first week, and a smooth first trip sets the tone.

How do I book travel before someone starts?

Book it centrally rather than routing it through systems the person cannot access yet. Because a pre-start hire has no corporate card or booking profile, the practical path is for someone internal — a manager, coordinator, or the travel team — to book and pay for the flights and hotel directly, or to arrange a one-time reimbursement with clear instructions if the person books their own. Confirm the details with the new hire well ahead (they may have constraints you do not know about), and make sure whatever you commit to reimburse is actually set up to pay out quickly, since asking someone to float travel costs before their first paycheck is a bad first impression.

Do new hires get their travel reimbursed?

When the travel is required by the company — an onboarding fly-in, a trip to headquarters, relocation-related travel — it is normally the company’s cost, handled either by booking it directly or by reimbursing the new hire, and that expectation should be set in writing before the trip. What is covered and how it is paid vary by company and by the type of travel, and some categories (relocation, for instance) have their own tax treatment, so the specifics belong in the offer or an onboarding policy rather than a rule of thumb. The principle is straightforward: if the company requires the trip, the company generally pays for it; confirm the details with your employer or HR.

Do interns get their travel paid?

It depends entirely on the company and the situation, so this is one to confirm rather than assume. When an intern is required to travel for the work — to an office, an event, or between sites — that travel is commonly treated like any other required business travel and covered, whereas relocation or the commute to a regular internship location often is not, and practices differ widely. Because internships also carry their own wage-and-hour and tax nuances that vary by jurisdiction, the right move is to ask the employer directly what travel is covered and get it in writing, rather than rely on a general expectation.

How do I expense travel for a job interview?

If an employer invites you to interview and says they will cover travel, they will usually either book it for you or ask you to book and submit receipts for reimbursement — ask up front which, and what the limits are, so there are no surprises. Keep every receipt (flights, hotel, ground transport, sometimes meals), stay within any stated caps, and submit promptly through whatever process they specify. If reimbursement was not offered, it is reasonable to ask politely whether travel is covered, especially for a long trip; many employers do but do not volunteer it. Get the commitment in writing before you book anything you cannot afford to eat.

How do I set up travel for a remote new hire?

Plan it as a deliberate part of onboarding, not an afterthought. Decide early whether the remote hire will fly in and when (many companies do it in the first week or two), book it centrally since they have no corporate account yet, and give them a clear itinerary plus the practical details — where to go, who to find, what is covered, how meals and incidentals work. Coordinate the trip with the onboarding schedule so the in-person time is actually used for the things that need it (meeting the team, setup, culture) rather than sitting alone in a conference room. A well-run first trip is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for a remote hire’s start.

More answers for the road in the Field Guide.