In my own little world, I was booked into a hotel for a duty travel overnight stop next week. Booked via HRG the cost (B&B) is £70. I went online and could have got the same for £59 without even trying for MoD discount.
I work for a government department and a colleague had a very similar experience a couple of weeks ago; £110 for a London hotel when she could get it on line for about £80.
We were having our monthly "get it off your chest" pow wow and she raised it as an example of waste. What we were told was that we had paid the travel agency that we use for that booking the £110 - but at the end of the financial year we get proportion of the money we've spent with them refunded and depending on how high that total spend is it can be up to 50%.
Things are not always as simple as they seem !