My employer's policy is that each employee's manager decides on a case-by-case basis, although I have never once seen a manager request the employee turn over the compensation. I believe this was done more to ferret out those who try to churn IDB/VDB to the point that it interferes with work duties. I do know a couple guys who've been booked to fly home Thursday midday and spent the entire day and all of Friday riding the VDB train, basically missing a whole day's work but still on the company clock, and once they knew the boss is watching, they cut it out. Whenever our itinerary changes, the corp travel desk emails the manager, and while it sounds very big-brotherish, it usually works in my favor: once my manager called me when I was stuck in DEN on my 3rd or 4th weather cancellation, asked if I was OK, and when I told him that the only hotel the travel desk could find was $800, he told me to take a lot of pictures of the room to share, because our employees don't sleep in airports (his words). Since I was still a newbie, I never would have had the courage to ask him to approve that charge so it was very good that he called.