That's not my point at all! We manage our expenses carefully and this past year everyone has made a conscious effort to reduce them as much as possible due to the down economy. So for the geographies I travel in, perhaps it is different in your geography, I can get as good a flexible rate by booking direct with one of the majors as by going with a third party booking portal. It’s a win-win situation for everyone (my employer and I). One of the things that helps make this happen is I am eligible to use corporate negotiated rates which are approx. %10 lower than the normal street rate. Many business travelers also have access to corporate negotiated rates. That said I occasionally book AAA or other special flexible rates when they happen to be better than my corporate rate. I.e. I save my employer (company) as much money as possible rather than maximizing my points earning by booking unnecessarily high rates and I still manage to wind up accruing a fairly large number of points.

--Jon