Yes, they force travelers to use a portal. But the flights/ options that are put into the portal are, depending on how big the company is, based on negotiated rates between the corporate travel department at the company and the airline. I worked in corporate sales for a major airline until a few years ago, and those negotiated discounts/ special rates are, for most big companies, negotiated between the airlines and the company directly. The travel agent and the portal have some say, but at the end of the day they simply comply with whatever the travel manager and the airline decide to do.
so in your case, your company travel manager simply made the deals with AA/BA, etc, and then worked with the travel agency and the portal to make sure that the options were inline/ compliance with your company's travel policy.
Originally Posted by
meFIRST
Most large firms use an in house or large corporate travel agency. A lot of this is driven by which agency (if any handles the travel). At my former employer, we had to use a web portal, and you were locked into which carrier has the best deal with the travel agency. There was not much choice here. To LHR - the web portal would spit out lots of BA/AA so perhaps people are choosing BA/AA because that's what the travel booking engine used at the firm is suggesting. To Asia - usually lots of UA pops up. So no it's not alliance based, but rahter who has the best price / arranged deal
The travel agency, via the web portal also enforces the time/distance rules on business and first class travel, as well as job package benefits (i.e certain people, usually at the C level, always flew first regardless of distance).
My former job loved to use American (Horrors!). I would always ditch the travel portal, that would always force me into flights from JFK (yuck)
Instead - I would call a live agent. When booking via the live corp travel agent - I could not ask for a specific carrier (that was against our travel policy), so instead I would say, I need to go from EWR to LHR at 9AM.
Bingo : Only CO flies that that time. The agent would then say, "well if you leave from JFK bla, bla" , I would counter "EWR is the most convenient for me". End of story. I would also use this trick to get myself on SQ, where possible.
Without the negotiated discount, CO was usually more expensive, but I got away with it, as long as it was booked per travel rules (business class on flights five hours or more, everything else was coach). And no, it didn't matter if any other carrier was cheaper, I could insist on leaving at a specific time, and frame my request to make CO (and other star carriers) the obvious, if not only choice.
I was under compensated anyway, so I didn't care.