My company used to be like that, but was acquired last year and the company that acquired us has such a refreshing travel process:
- Booking fees are itemized and stated up front. $3 for bookings handled 100% via the online reservation system, $25 if you ever have to talk to an actual agent.
- The online reservation system shows publicly listed rates as well as negotiated rates, and you're free to choose what you want within policy. The negotiated rates were virtually never the cheapest, but they also tended to come with a lot more flexibility (i.e. no change fees, refundable up to time of departure, 24 hour cancellation of hotel reservations, etc).
Those two aspects, combined with the fact that the travel would ultimately be booked to your card on file anyway (generally a corp card for anyone traveling frequently), pretty much negates any incentive to go outside of the official travel system. Depending on the trip and your travel budget, you can either go with the riskier but cheaper options or go with the more flexible but also more expensive options. The default booking fee is tiny enough to be understandable, and the incremental $22 fee ends up well worth it in the situations you need to call the travel team's 1-800 number to get you out of a bind.
The old system didn't bother me much as I was used to it being The Way Companies Are. But after being spoiled here, I dread the day I end up in another travel-heavy job and have to go back to the more typical Big Corp travel process.
- Booking fees are itemized and stated up front. $3 for bookings handled 100% via the online reservation system, $25 if you ever have to talk to an actual agent.
- The online reservation system shows publicly listed rates as well as negotiated rates, and you're free to choose what you want within policy. The negotiated rates were virtually never the cheapest, but they also tended to come with a lot more flexibility (i.e. no change fees, refundable up to time of departure, 24 hour cancellation of hotel reservations, etc).
Those two aspects, combined with the fact that the travel would ultimately be booked to your card on file anyway (generally a corp card for anyone traveling frequently), pretty much negates any incentive to go outside of the official travel system. Depending on the trip and your travel budget, you can either go with the riskier but cheaper options or go with the more flexible but also more expensive options. The default booking fee is tiny enough to be understandable, and the incremental $22 fee ends up well worth it in the situations you need to call the travel team's 1-800 number to get you out of a bind.
The old system didn't bother me much as I was used to it being The Way Companies Are. But after being spoiled here, I dread the day I end up in another travel-heavy job and have to go back to the more typical Big Corp travel process.