What's your company travel policy?

[PDog]

We are contracted to Virgin, corporate fares which are flex, booked through a corporate portal. Double status credits are ok if you hit the booking window!
These days even international is in Y (Asia was J when I last did it, so not going again!) Hotels are also company approved only, refunded up to ~$120 a day for food domestically, paid ~$130 per diem O/S - great for Asia, not so fab for everywhere else (which would be a junket, so no sympathy there!)
For our industry, I think domestic is pretty generous, but not like 10 years ago when flights before 7.30am and after 5.30pm were J only!

 

[PDog]

We have a travel portal, I just ignore it.

That would be a written warning for me! I’m grateful I can now use my personal rather than corporate Amex and get points from the spend!

 

[pauly7]

I contract a lot so this is me at the moment:

Employer 1
Domestic: QF exclusive / Y / Corp B class fares only
International: J, QF preferred but anything goes

Employer 2
Domestic: BFOD +/2 hours, Y, cheapest outbound direction, flex allowed on return (Most people game to fly QF it’s very easy)
International: J, anything goes


When I contract for and travel with certain VIPs that you may see in the media it is F all the way or sometimes even private...

 

[Forg]

My better-half is federal government, but has to manage her own section’s budget so knows what things cost.

She’s forced to use a single travel agent which always fails to find the best fare ... every time she gets a quote, she goes on WebJet and finds something cheaper & complains to the travel agent who then somehow conveniently finds that cheaper fare (except adds their cut).

Our tax dollars at work ...

She even gets to pay extra for a special product which has no frequent flyer points.

 

[JessicaTam]

I have had a few work flights and they have consistently been QF. Not sure how much leeway there is.

At least I can take the work car home - which is a double edged sword!

 

[33kft]

Stuck with SAP concur for travel approvals where I am - it's so bad it is comical. You'll almost always violate travel policy no matter what you do, as it lists off reams of 24+ hour connections that you didn't take even though they were cheaper than what you did take. It's meant to be effective in enforcing CFOTD policy but it just isn't,

 

[cove]

We tend to do Premium economy for long hauls and if it is Qantas we offer to reimburse points upgrades that our staff secure. We cannot do that on Virgin and Air New Zealand Flight’s so they stay Premium Economy.

 

[yld200]

I work for a small / medium sized company which is run out of AU but have operations globally.

Policy is Y only unless premium cabins are cheaper / make sense. I live in the UK now and often have excess baggage so EU J can be cheaper than Y with extra bags. The policy is mainly common sense applies and dont abuse the system.

We also have a corporate / portal agent but I do most of my own bookings as I know what will work best and the time zone sucks with them.

I wish we had a PE or J allowance.

 

[blackcat20]

Stuck with SAP concur for travel approvals where I am - it's so bad it is comical. You'll almost always violate travel policy no matter what you do, as it lists off reams of 24+ hour connections that you didn't take even though they were cheaper than what you did take. It's meant to be effective in enforcing CFOTD policy but it just isn't,

That was previously our travel portal which is why I ignored it. I’ve avoided the new one so far too.

 

[Denali]

Stuck with SAP concur for travel approvals where I am - it's so bad it is comical. You'll almost always violate travel policy no matter what you do, as it lists off reams of 24+ hour connections that you didn't take even though they were cheaper than what you did take. It's meant to be effective in enforcing CFOTD policy but it just isn't,

You just triggered me. I'll be in the corner, rocking back and forth, mumbling.......

 

[Forg]

I work for an Australian office (with registration in Australia) of a Belgian company. Around 200 employees around the globe, Sydney is the 2nd-largest office outside of Ghent with around 50 people here.

Our policy is Economy within Australia and to New Zealand.
Premium Economy up to (I think) 10hrs international, which is most of SE Asia (I'm pretty sure Beijing is outside whatever that limit is).
Business for long-haul international.
As others have said above, you're also allowed to be 'sensible', so if you found a Business fare to Tokyo for the same price as Premium Economy then the Business fare would be fine (unlike some companies & the government where you wouldn't even be allowed to spend less money if a Business fare came up on "deep special").

We use a travel agent; for employees that're "trusted" (been here a while) we can get away with booking it ourselves as long as we don't take the piss (ie. cost is reasonable).

 

[MickC32]

We are on BFOD although most of out team stick with VA as we are a freight partner of theirs and an exclusive few were gifted Gold status.

I'm based in Perth and most of my travel is to Adelaide so I stick with QF as they have double the flights daily and usually the price difference is negligble. I sometimes need to get creative when travelling to SYD and/or MEL but they tend to turn a blind eye to my QF loyalty.

 

[Max Samuels]

When I worked at a large bank we had to use a corporate travel agent which is sooooooooo dodgy as the fares they quote are more expensive than direct! Someone is getting a kickback there absolutely no doubt. Once JQ J was cheaper/same price as QF Y but I couldn't have it because it was "business class" and policy said Economy (even though it was more expensive) - as I said - kickbacks for sure.

Now the client pays for my travel so it is whatever we negotiate with them. I would never suggest a $1200 o/w J fare on QF for domestic travel, but I often get $600 VA o/w J approved.

 

[ish]

When I worked at a large bank we had to use a corporate travel agent which is sooooooooo dodgy as the fares they quote are more expensive than direct! Someone is getting a kickback there absolutely no doubt. Once JQ J was cheaper/same price as QF Y but I couldn't have it because it was "business class" and policy said Economy (even though it was more expensive) - as I said - kickbacks for sure.

Now the client pays for my travel so it is whatever we negotiate with them. I would never suggest a $1200 o/w J fare on QF for domestic travel, but I often get $600 VA o/w J approved.

I have heard that the issue in some cases is the overall corporate deal your company may have teed up with the carrier. I understand that although the rates and availability through the travel portal may be similar to what is available direct from the carrier’s site / travel agent, that there are additional rebates / credits / perks (CL memberships etc) as part of the annual deal, that mean the actual cost to your company might be different than the sum of all the flights booked in a given year.

Not sure if 100% accurate, but that might explain the discrepancies?

 

[Forg]

^ Many large companies, and also the government, have rules which only allow people in certain positions to travel in certain classes. There's a rule, the rule's the rule, and that's that. Exceptions are few enough that they're not going to open the floodgates to potential rule-circumvention by allowing those exceptions.

In the public service it's mostly about perception, they could get J fares for 1/4 of the price of Y fares but they wouldn't care - in case anyone in the media found out that public servants were flying J, what a waste of money & ripping us all off! [the truth would of course come out eventually, that the J flights were actually cheaper, but that wouldn't ever get noticed by anyone as it wouldn't be the headline]

 

[Max Samuels]

(CL memberships etc) ....

Well that's a kickback, yeah?
I also worked a company years ago where the CEO insisted we use a particular agent and then he would pay for the entire travel bill each month on his personal AMEX to get the points. He was a dodgy cough* for sure. Turned out the travel agent was his mate too, so it was all gross and disgusting. The sad thing though is that he never traveled - it was us lowly plebs (sales people) traveling the world, forced to fly coach at not very cheap prices thanks to dodgy mate at travel agent - and he'd rack up all the points via credit card spend. He was such a greedy loser that he actually enquired as to whether he could get our frequent flyer points because the company was "his"!! Qantas told him where to go...... anyway, he got fired in the end and the new CEO allowed us to book and pay for travel on our own cards. His position was that we could earn enough points to upgrade oursleves to J because the company policy was PE or Y. Worked out quite well for us all... except for the previous CEO who is in jail.

 

[Denali]

Well that's a kickback, yeah?
I also worked a company years ago where the CEO insisted we use a particular agent and then he would pay for the entire travel bill each month on his personal AMEX to get the points. He was a dodgy cough* for sure. Turned out the travel agent was his mate too, so it was all gross and disgusting. The sad thing though is that he never traveled - it was us lowly plebs (sales people) traveling the world, forced to fly coach at not very cheap prices thanks to dodgy mate at travel agent - and he'd rack up all the points via credit card spend. He was such a greedy loser that he actually enquired as to whether he could get our frequent flyer points because the company was "his"!! Qantas told him where to go...... anyway, he got fired in the end and the new CEO allowed us to book and pay for travel on our own cards. His position was that we could earn enough points to upgrade oursleves to J because the company policy was PE or Y. Worked out quite well for us all... except for the previous CEO who is in jail.

A couple of times per year I get email questionaire/reminders that we have ways to give info to auditing or other managers inc whistleblowing anonymously to corp group general counsel/going outside the country if required.

 

[Ausbt]

Worked out quite well for us all... except for the previous CEO who is in jail.

I love it ! I'd like to add a few CEOs to that list. Mind you I managed to get myself a bit of a reputation by turning up early to external staff entertainment functions and putting my corp Amex up for payment. Some thought I was only doing it for the points, can you believe that? Oh surely not. Anyway, I had some staff at the time who were on the nose (to me at least) and used to pull these stunts of ordering coughtails and two mixed drinks at at time. I'd turn up and say to the bar staff 'beer and wine only and let me know when the tab hits $2K'. Yeah, I know, Mr Popularity. So as I sold it to others, I was only doing this to control costs and be a good corporate employee.

Another interesting one was our old VA Accelerate account. I recall being able to log into the portal and seeing all of the flight details anyone else using the account had booked. It was really great for 'keeping tabs' (a.k.a. snooping) on the flight proclivities of my colleagues !

 

[ajd]

Y only, for all flights, dom/international no matter what the length (guess who's about to fly to Europe and is looking forward to 40+ hours in the back of a 777?). Very few exceptions, none of which will ever be relevant to me.

We book discount by default but can buy flex fares with immediate manager approval, esp for international.

There are a few preferred airlines, and if you want to use a non-preferred airline where there is a preferred airline option you may have to ring up an agent.

I also have to suffer with Concur. That said, Concur manages to be a significant and substantial improvement on the systems we were using when I started at the company a few years back. Trust me, if you think Concur is bad, there is much worse out there.

 

[Max Samuels]

I also have to suffer with Concur. That said, Concur manages to be a significant and substantial improvement on the systems we were using when I started at the company a few years back. Trust me, if you think Concur is bad, there is much worse out there.

OMG Concur...... brings back many bad memories.