Business Travel Basics
Business Travel Basics.
Business travel in today's world can be both frustrating. and confusing.? Many of the loyalty programs that existed in the past that incentivized business travel have become obsolete, or have been cancelled by carriers
In this era of Zoom and Teams meetings, in-person, meetings are becoming more and more rare, and also more and more difficult to organize in a cost effective way
For many years, I worked in an industry that was very trade show heavy, Spending many weeks per year on the road. Over that time, I learned a lot of dos and don'ts about business travel from the perspective of a traveler.
Employees don't look forward to being sent out on the road because it usually leaves them upside down financially.? It is also difficult to be away from your home base for extended periods of time.? For this to make sense for employees in this day and age, we need to make sure:
1 -? That the face- to-face time that's accomplished through travel is both profitable and necessary.
2 - That travel time is kept as short as possible.
3 - That employees are properly compensated for this time.
I also worked for many years in the travel industry, booking both airline and car rental for business travelers. Many businesses were hesitant to send people on the road because they thought the cost was too high.? However, knowing some tricks of the trade can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars when you send someone on the road.
For many years one of the key things that the airlines would catch you on was what was called a Saturday night stay.? If the itinerary you were booking did not include a weekend, the airline assumed that you were a business traveler, and automatically, rates were more expensive.? So many companies were stuck asking employees to either stay Saturday on the road, or paying a much higher fare to get them back on Friday.
Another way Car rental companies would catch you was if the car was being paid for on a card that was different than the person who was booking it, they would flag that as a business traveler, and would not offer any discounts or Internet rates to those bookings, leaving you to pay full rack rate..
Why would airlines or car rental companies care if you were a business traveler?? Well, in short, they relied on the fact that businesses were not watching the expenses as closely as individuals - So they could maximize profit on those itineraries by charging premium costs.
Another great example is on many midweek flights, Business class is actually more expensive than first class. This is once again because they assume those booking first class are leisure travelers who are booking their own travel, while they assume those booking business class are either being booked through an agency or through their companies travel desk.
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So how do you avoid these traps???
How do you handle employees Per day expenses when they are on the road?
How do you handle dealing with unions at convention centers if you are dealing with trade shows or exhibitions?
How do you pay an hourly employee when they are on the road and basically on the clock the entire day?
These are some of the subjects that we will be dealing with in future issues of this newsletter.? By doing so, we hope to give you some cost saving tools that can also save you time.
We don't sell business travel, so the point of the newsletter will not be to sell you something, But instead, to offer you insight.
We DO sell travel products, and leisure travel.? So if those are areas of interest to you, we invite you to click the links below to subscribe to our social media feeds, where you can get more of that information on those as well.
Thanks!