What's your company travel policy?

[mandolino]

Eastern hemisphere regional manager of small private international engineering service and technology (as in mechanical devices, not as in software company), run my own budget which generally means Y everywhere for me or my techs. My travel is sales/customer relations/troubleshooting etc and can't usually be billed to client.

Exceptions might be when it's urgent and J or PE are the only options.
That's more likely to be my field techs and is usually covered within lump sum mob fee agreements but still mostly Y.

J over a certain number of hours does't make much sense for Australasia where almost everything international is 8h+ and the multipliers are huge. E.g J vs Y for PER - LHR rtn on QF direct = 7x more at least.
Or about $10,000 difference in real terms.

Much cheaper and more sensible - and operationally more effective and less stressful - IMO is to allow a couple of slack days and recover in hotel.

Back in the day, due to high FF status on several airlines, I would get upgrades but modern yield management has pretty much eliminated those.

I only go J for long haul award flights with my wife.

 

[tgh]

#1 son works for an International category killer in the US , everyone flies cattle within the US.... everyone...
Long haul to Europe or wherever is J for execs and above

 

[PineappleSkip]

All work travel is international FIFO contracts to coughamamie destinations in MEA, Clients only pay Y (govt funder requirement), usually you need to use client TA which vary in competence. Some are very competent at finding expensive BFOD. I pay the extra for J which is fine if they have a confirmed Y booking that gets upgraded, except the TA prices always higher than web. A couple of times its been cheaper for me to buy J online than pay for the upgrade, and I've done that. I pay the extra because straight to client work off a 30+ hr overnight itinerary would do my head in, or back in, or both.

* My 1,000th post. Only took 12 years *

cheers skip

 

[jpp42]

I work for a major corporation (80,000 employees worldwide) but have a job that requires 60-80% travel so I have some flexibility that others may not. I'm a senior technical advisor so equivalent to mid-level management from a seniority/payscale perspective.

Our corporate portal is quite good and there are some tricks. It flags your itinerary if your chosen fare is more than AUD 140 more than "lowest logical" for domestic or something like AU $350 for international. This wiggle room allows you to avoid totally stupid options usually, and allows me to choose my airline domestically in most cases. How it determines "logical" is based on what you specify as your required departure and arrival time, which you can make as precise as + or - two hours. So if there's a flight you want at say, 9:30 am and one you don't want at 10:00 AM, you put your departure time as 7:35am and +/- two hours, which means it won't find the 10:00 AM flight in the filter. It also generally allows you to pick nonstop over connecting without an issue even if the fare is considerably higher. Even if I need to book something that gets flagged, due to my job role and travel experience I'm allowed to book anyway with the flags reviewed later by a travel manager (others have to get explicit approval for deviations). I've never had a travel manager say anything so I guess I haven't done anything too egregious.

For most flights I typically do "red e-deal" (or sale) on the outbound and Flexi on the return, but this is mostly subject to whether I can do this without causing too much trouble with the lowest logical rule. The company would prefer lowest fare all the time, and if you do have to change, just eat the change fees - this often is way less than Flexi fares. I would go along with this but sometimes need a few extra SC's... please don't tell on me

It's all Y by default, of course, but frequent travellers get a special exception for PE if the itinerary is 14 hours or longer (combined flight time of all flights, not including layovers). The problem with this is that the portal recognises US airlines like United and American with their "Economy Plus" or similar products as PE. These US airlines all have the same seat width as Y in these products. I refuse to fly 3-3-3 in a 787 on United, even if it is a bit of extra legroom when I can fly the longhaul on QF in economy on an A380 in the upper deck with plenty of shoulder room. Qantas PE is extremely expensive, something like $3000-4000 more and this would be hard to explain. So I've actually not "used" this policy on my US flights. It does come in handy when flying to Europe or Asia if you can hit that 14 hr minimum (which is hard for Asia). There is more competition for "real PE" in these routes and hence the upcharge is more reasonable, plus you don't have the fake PE of the US airlines to worry the portal comparing against.

Overall I'm happy with the policies, it seems a good balance of frugality and flexibility for travelers. The self service approach does require you to be savvy about travel booking though - not all of my colleagues are as happy about figuring out the ins and outs of our portal.

 

[Flashback]

Has varied for the companies I've contracted to.

Multinational mining was J > 3 hours, which from PER was pretty much everything. ADL was borderline, but the function that operated out of there I had no need to visit so didn't affect me.

Living in London now, policies vary, but as a contractor I can skirt around them. When doing consulting work for clients sitting in one of my portfolios, they pay, so I book what they will take, usually PE (which is fine for short hops over the Atlantic) although a nice ex-EU can often get J to.

Main client I'm working with at the moment is Y for my role, even though it's quite senior. Booked through Concur. Being a contractor... I book myself, so only log the expense in Concur after for PO submission/approval. I will usually book PE (my colleagues can only book Y as Concur will limit them, even if Y+ is cheaper) and I will often self fund J or F as I've done several times this year. BA has a handy thing where you can cancel within 24 hours, so I book the Y or Y+ itin, expense that, then cancel and book my preferred itinerary. Win / win, as company pays what they want and I get to travel as I want. Most of my trips are last minute, long haul, booked usually 2-3 days before departure.

That being said, most of my SC's are self funded (usually 2000/year) and then work travel adds on 1-2000/year.

Personal travel is typically J or F. Ex-EU is a wonderful thing........... although there have been some cracking deals ex-LHR in F recently on Bloody Awful.

 

[coco50]

I would not call my business a company, because I am the owner and only employee. As a way to write off business income, I attend an annual conference in the LOTFAP. I fly business and apply for an upgrade to F which has happened on several occasions. My business policy is 5* accommodation which also includes bar food in the per diem. I think I'll keep on working for myself!

 

[Milboo]

Last job was BFOD in Y and booked through Concur (which I had no issues with), with corporate rates with VA and QF. There was ways around non preferred carrier by selecting specific flight times. Our HQ was in Europe so all International travel was in J, with very very sharp rates on EY and EK.

We had $100 a day meal allowance too. Up to you how you spent it and could go quite far if you filled up on the breakfast buffet at the hotel (within room rates).

Current role - travel policy is badly written. It is basically Y for domestic and silent on International. Expectation is PE. I’d refuse to travel if I was expected to fly for work in Y, be expected to hit the ground running at both ends and only be away a few days.

 

[pauly7]

Last job was BFOD in Y and booked through Concur (which I had no issues with)

My main issue with Concur is that it flags every single itinerary as out of compliance which means trying to make sense of TRUE violations of policy almost impossible - and no, it’s not because of the way it’s set up it’s just a inflexible system front and back end.

It is also slow, clunky and has a messy UX but so does everything SAP related

 

[jpp42]

My main issue with Concur is that it flags every single itinerary as out of compliance which means trying to make sense of TRUE violations of policy almost impossible - and no, it’s not because of the way it’s set up it’s just a inflexible system front and back end.

This is absolutely an issue of your travel department not configuring it properly. As I mentioned in my post above, ours is setup decently and a vast majority of my flights are within compliance. Concur is a complex tool and its usefulness is affected significantly by the competence of those who configure it.

 

[wanderer_au]

I just realised I didn't specify my online booking tool. We use CTM, with its "Lightning" booking tool, which is fine. I do my own bookings and I am also my own approver. The bills obviously show up on my work Amex card so there's no sneaky F flights to LHR (which I'd never get a leave pass for from SWMBO+offspring, in any case). Also our Internal Audit team keep an eye on who is doing what in any case. So the system works reasonably well.

 

[pauly7]

This is absolutely an issue of your travel department not configuring it properly. As I mentioned in my post above, ours is setup decently and a vast majority of my flights are within compliance. Concur is a complex tool and its usefulness is affected significantly by the competence of those who configure it.

Concur’s team configured it..... but anyway I don’t really care, the UX is horrible though regardless and not detailed enough.