Corporate Travel Agents - Do they provide value?
I work for a US multinational, and we have to use the corporate booking agent. If we don't show the booking number on our expense claim they aren't authorised except in certain circumstances.
e.g. you can only book via their web site and can't book a hotel less than a working day in advance. So if I'm required to sort a problem on site next day I have to book it myself.
I don't fly but use hotels a lot and have noticed they can get good rates not available to Joe Public, it's just cumbersome choosing.
e.g. you can only book via their web site and can't book a hotel less than a working day in advance. So if I'm required to sort a problem on site next day I have to book it myself.
I don't fly but use hotels a lot and have noticed they can get good rates not available to Joe Public, it's just cumbersome choosing.
And then....
Many of the conferences and so on have special hotel rates, which are not available through travel agents. That also applies to other organisations - if you are going to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) in Sophia Antipolis (just north of Antibes) then to get the special hotel rates for ETSI delegates, you must go direct and not through a travel agent.
But it would seem that the general opinion shown here is that they usually aren't worthwhile.
Many of the conferences and so on have special hotel rates, which are not available through travel agents. That also applies to other organisations - if you are going to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) in Sophia Antipolis (just north of Antibes) then to get the special hotel rates for ETSI delegates, you must go direct and not through a travel agent.
But it would seem that the general opinion shown here is that they usually aren't worthwhile.
A good few years ago when I worked for a Big Corporation with a Significant Logo the corporate travel agent was brilliant - sorted out complex itineraries, found good hotels, worked deals, advised possible perks to be found. Anyway, cost cutting and then the company used cheaper agents and frankly it was easier to simply do it yourself. That was when I was in UK, when I moved to Singapore the bosses secretary arranged travel & hotels - this was great as I got on with her very well and she always sorted the deals I wanted.
Nowadays, self employed and with the internet having all manner of ways to book flights, hotels & packages & with me being pretty experienced when it comes to travel - I frankly don't think travel agents can offer much. If I use them (very rarely) they don't really do anything I can't do myself - if they can't get better deals then finding a way to get some perk or other or finding a way to cut travel time off an itinerary might get my custom - but they don't.
Nowadays, self employed and with the internet having all manner of ways to book flights, hotels & packages & with me being pretty experienced when it comes to travel - I frankly don't think travel agents can offer much. If I use them (very rarely) they don't really do anything I can't do myself - if they can't get better deals then finding a way to get some perk or other or finding a way to cut travel time off an itinerary might get my custom - but they don't.
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I worked for a US Multinational company which had a fairly good corporate travel department, if you got stuck somewhere in the middle of the night you could call the 24 hour number and they'd handle the rest rather then having to queue with people, and they'd inform all necessary parties in the company what was happening. Unfortunately that companies travel policy was always the cheapest, regardless of inconvenience.
The best guy I had was with my last company, he was an ex travel agent employed by the company simply to do all travel coordination. He fully understood the needs of those in the company and communicated properly on all bookings, and would keep you in the loop (i.e bookings that are held, and when we need to confirm and pay for them, once paid for refunding or transferred to next day etc), and also offer low cost airline flights when schedules were definate and it was the option between a 15 hour business class flight or a 4 hour direct Thomson flight (i.e Sharm El Sheikh to Manchester). The guy was working for the bigger picture, and not just to a budget.
In essence, when your travelling a lot, someone on your side can be invaluable especially when things go wrong.
On the flip side, if it's an outside company that adds extra to the bills and offers your a poor service then it obviously is going to be easier booking yourself.
The best guy I had was with my last company, he was an ex travel agent employed by the company simply to do all travel coordination. He fully understood the needs of those in the company and communicated properly on all bookings, and would keep you in the loop (i.e bookings that are held, and when we need to confirm and pay for them, once paid for refunding or transferred to next day etc), and also offer low cost airline flights when schedules were definate and it was the option between a 15 hour business class flight or a 4 hour direct Thomson flight (i.e Sharm El Sheikh to Manchester). The guy was working for the bigger picture, and not just to a budget.
In essence, when your travelling a lot, someone on your side can be invaluable especially when things go wrong.
On the flip side, if it's an outside company that adds extra to the bills and offers your a poor service then it obviously is going to be easier booking yourself.
Big corporations should ask themselves if their staff really should be fart arsing around spending time planning travel or working on what is supposed to be their job.
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You mean it's more time consuming to tap a few buttons on a keyboard. then enter credit card details, than explaining everything, in precise detail, then a number of telephone calls back and forth, with a travel agent?
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Dealing with corporate generally took longer because they generally provided a service that required more communication back and forth because they did what they wanted to do not what you asked them to do..
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Very well put 1DC.
For those not in the know ... airlines, hotel chains etc, offer agents incentives (bribes) to sell their products above all others.
As the saying goes ... "If you want something done properly then do it yourself"
For those not in the know ... airlines, hotel chains etc, offer agents incentives (bribes) to sell their products above all others.
As the saying goes ... "If you want something done properly then do it yourself"
Big corporations should ask themselves if the time spent because of corporate travel agents maximising profit is greater than letting the travellers decide their own arrangements.
Plus a little matter of pi**ing off emplyees because the agents get it wrong - and the employees and their departments suffer, not the managers or corporate travel department.
Plus a little matter of pi**ing off emplyees because the agents get it wrong - and the employees and their departments suffer, not the managers or corporate travel department.
I wrote about this in another post recently.
Corp travel agents exist to satisfy their own customer, which is generally the Procurement department of a business who select them, rather than the actual travellers. Procurement generally have no idea of travel (thinking a travel agent is the way to go is a typical example) and also tend not to do travel, hence there is a certain backcurrent of envy against those whose jobs it is to do so.
Because Procurement take their typical approach of believing all purchases are a commodity, they just select the agent they can knock down to the cheapest price, so you get what you pay for.
Corp agents do have access to a range of "incentives" to hand out to their customers, and you can guess which department in your company these are quietly given to .........
Among other experiences (we don't use them any more) were a trip from London to a trade conference in Orlando, Florida, where I was told there were no direct flights (!), and we needed to connect in, of all places, St Louis (this was in the final TWA days). A little research showed TWA were also doing a UK agents incentive at the time based on the number of transatlantic tickets booked. That seems typical of the service you get.
Corp travel agents exist to satisfy their own customer, which is generally the Procurement department of a business who select them, rather than the actual travellers. Procurement generally have no idea of travel (thinking a travel agent is the way to go is a typical example) and also tend not to do travel, hence there is a certain backcurrent of envy against those whose jobs it is to do so.
Because Procurement take their typical approach of believing all purchases are a commodity, they just select the agent they can knock down to the cheapest price, so you get what you pay for.
Corp agents do have access to a range of "incentives" to hand out to their customers, and you can guess which department in your company these are quietly given to .........
Among other experiences (we don't use them any more) were a trip from London to a trade conference in Orlando, Florida, where I was told there were no direct flights (!), and we needed to connect in, of all places, St Louis (this was in the final TWA days). A little research showed TWA were also doing a UK agents incentive at the time based on the number of transatlantic tickets booked. That seems typical of the service you get.
Another example from today. Mrs radeng is in Singapore on business, and has had a trip to Bangalore tacked on at the last minute. Silk Air fly direct (the only carrier who does that she has found) for around £300 return. The corporate travel agent in the UK who she is supposed to use 'can't book' Silk Air. They offer a routing taking a long time, costing £1100 and involving a change..........
Not much added value in using them, is there?
Not much added value in using them, is there?
Do point out to the agent that if they, rather than employing some substantial GDS-based booking system that they have to go away on a training course to understand, just type "Flights from Singaore to Bangalore" into Google, it shows all the direct flights in about a second.
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Probably the silliest corporate booking i had was when i wanted to go to Aberdeen from Norwich.It was a while ago and i have been retired a good time so my memory of the prices quoted are not accurate but not far off.
The local airline(think it was Eastern but not certain) had a flight that had a 10 minute stop at Humberside for about £140. Corporate booked me Norwich to Amsterdam,AMS to LHR and then LHR to ABZ, price about £700. I just ignored them and took the local flight, Corp then tried to give me the hard word and threatened to report me to my VP, I told them to go ahead as i would be delighted to compare prices with him. Never heard any more but probably got another black star against my name!!
The local airline(think it was Eastern but not certain) had a flight that had a 10 minute stop at Humberside for about £140. Corporate booked me Norwich to Amsterdam,AMS to LHR and then LHR to ABZ, price about £700. I just ignored them and took the local flight, Corp then tried to give me the hard word and threatened to report me to my VP, I told them to go ahead as i would be delighted to compare prices with him. Never heard any more but probably got another black star against my name!!
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To be fair to corporate agents, they are limited by the rules set by the company that they are contracted to, usually price, and they do have their uses when things go pear shaped. In that case they have the great advantage of being connected to the booking systems while all you have is a flaky phone line, and the individual agents do seem to relish the challenge.
My personal experience includes hotel bookings being cancelled whilst I was en route, which is not a huge problem when arriving in a Canadian city in the afternoon but is not a lot of fun when arriving in Bangalore in the small hours; or getting a flight booking one month out which I should have noticed but when the date and day of the week are as expected I didn't check the month.
We have to use a corporate online system which is basically a screen scraper. This is notoriously slow and rarely shows the lower prices available on airline websites. Each line item on the travel req costs £25 so straight away for a simple trip with two flights and hotac they've made £75. Cooments have been made about the best use of employee time but I can search two or three airlines websites for the best flight before our system has finished its trawl. Hotel bookings are even worse. Unless you like poor quality hotels in rough parts of town or long commutes in strange cites more time is wasted getting more appropriate accomodation.
Are they a good deal? If you are in travel procument perhaps, as your ticket billings can be lower so that's yourobjective met. From the company point of view, probably not, if all the manhour costs of travel are taken into account.
My personal experience includes hotel bookings being cancelled whilst I was en route, which is not a huge problem when arriving in a Canadian city in the afternoon but is not a lot of fun when arriving in Bangalore in the small hours; or getting a flight booking one month out which I should have noticed but when the date and day of the week are as expected I didn't check the month.
We have to use a corporate online system which is basically a screen scraper. This is notoriously slow and rarely shows the lower prices available on airline websites. Each line item on the travel req costs £25 so straight away for a simple trip with two flights and hotac they've made £75. Cooments have been made about the best use of employee time but I can search two or three airlines websites for the best flight before our system has finished its trawl. Hotel bookings are even worse. Unless you like poor quality hotels in rough parts of town or long commutes in strange cites more time is wasted getting more appropriate accomodation.
Are they a good deal? If you are in travel procument perhaps, as your ticket billings can be lower so that's yourobjective met. From the company point of view, probably not, if all the manhour costs of travel are taken into account.
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Essentially, the best way to do it in a company with a lot of travel is to have a dedicated internal guy dealing with travel. This works!
I book individuals and groups of students and lecturers on travel throughout the UK, Europe and the US/Canada, occasionally even Japan. While it does take a bit of time to get it right, a 'sixth sense' tells you when you know you've got the right deal, and we wouldn't have it any other way. While our policies are reviewed regularly, we don't feel we could obtain any better value by using a corporate travel agent. And as a public sector organisation, every penny counts, and every penny is accountable.
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I agree DEE747 in your situation, that works very well.
With a company moving people constantly, i.e. in my case when working for cruise lines, oil companies and now VVIPs, we have regular changes which need to be planned for and dealt with, in addition to having someone that can answer the phone at 2am and resolve a situation.
Our agent is able to 'hold' bookings on several flights without making a payment, then at a certain point the airline makes us pay for these flights, once paid for we can cancel and refund (takes time) or change the date. When you have complex travel plans for multiple employees changing constantly you need someone.
With a company moving people constantly, i.e. in my case when working for cruise lines, oil companies and now VVIPs, we have regular changes which need to be planned for and dealt with, in addition to having someone that can answer the phone at 2am and resolve a situation.
Our agent is able to 'hold' bookings on several flights without making a payment, then at a certain point the airline makes us pay for these flights, once paid for we can cancel and refund (takes time) or change the date. When you have complex travel plans for multiple employees changing constantly you need someone.
I use one here, even though I am perfectly capable of booking direct with SQ or through a flight booking website as I usually do for personal travel, even though they charge the company S$30 and I am not always sure that they got the best deal.
The main, overriding reason is, if I do it myself and pay with my credit card (we don't have such things as corporate credit cards as HO insist we use a bank here that doesn't do CCCs!!!), said HO take so bl**dy long to approve and pay my expenses that I never get the cash in time for the credit card bill!! They won't pay the expenses until the Travel Authorisation Form has been signed off by my line manager and the Group CFO... who has to sign off every single Purchase Order from every office and regularly takes weeks to get around to it.
I am not too worried if it's a few hundred bucks down to Jakarta, but a flight back to UK and I would be, so it's the agent every time.
The main, overriding reason is, if I do it myself and pay with my credit card (we don't have such things as corporate credit cards as HO insist we use a bank here that doesn't do CCCs!!!), said HO take so bl**dy long to approve and pay my expenses that I never get the cash in time for the credit card bill!! They won't pay the expenses until the Travel Authorisation Form has been signed off by my line manager and the Group CFO... who has to sign off every single Purchase Order from every office and regularly takes weeks to get around to it.
I am not too worried if it's a few hundred bucks down to Jakarta, but a flight back to UK and I would be, so it's the agent every time.
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I have a trip on Sunday to sunny Aberdeen, from Jerez; although I can also fly from Seville, Gib or Malaga which are within a reasonable drive from here, Jerez being the closest and at this time of year nice and quiet.
As I am well aware that our Corporate TA will do the least amount of work, I now make my own recommendations to my "Booker" prior to requesting travel. In this case I recommended to avoid IB and only book with BA, because I had checked the rates and BA was half the price of IB. The email came back the next day saying that IB was over GBP1300 and offering cheaper options from AGP. When I insisted they look at a BA option the fare was GBP585, leaving Jerez.
The Booker had passed on my recommendation, the Corporate TA, just did not bother to read...
As I am well aware that our Corporate TA will do the least amount of work, I now make my own recommendations to my "Booker" prior to requesting travel. In this case I recommended to avoid IB and only book with BA, because I had checked the rates and BA was half the price of IB. The email came back the next day saying that IB was over GBP1300 and offering cheaper options from AGP. When I insisted they look at a BA option the fare was GBP585, leaving Jerez.
The Booker had passed on my recommendation, the Corporate TA, just did not bother to read...
On sites such as Expedia and Opodo, you can get a better deal by booking the flight and hotel together, but I frequently found that Corporate travel booked them individually (or appearing to book them individually and charging us the top rates
)
I've also found that it was better to find the most convenient flight to suit one's schedule and then tell them to book specific flights otherwise most of their options would be inappropriate.
)I've also found that it was better to find the most convenient flight to suit one's schedule and then tell them to book specific flights otherwise most of their options would be inappropriate.