Originally Posted by
lighthand
Actually in all the companies I've worked with, the corporate TA's take feedback from travelers seriously. The companies (at least the ones I've worked for) spend extra to fly us Biz class, so that upon touch down we are able to hit the ground running. Hence personnel comfort & preference is considered to a certain extent.
Of course cost savings is always an issue. But as long as difference is not exorbitant, we generally have a say on whom we fly with. Anything more than 5% difference, and it's a no-go. And before anyone say that 5% is minor, my company's employees are required to travel at least 25% of time. Multiply that by about 1000 pax, that adds up to quite a substantial amount over a financial year.
I'm not saying that travellers don't have any input at all into the purchasing decision - clearly if employees are very unhappy that they are being sent on a carrier that's affecting their work performance, I think there would be another look at the travel patterns.
However, what I am saying is that I don't think any decent finance department/travel coordinator whose primary aim is to get employees to a destination at the lowest cost possible within a certain schedule (so non-stop/transit time compared with priority of employee schedule) without impacting their work performance too much (aka hard product/transit experience) is going to be very sympathetic to the mileage earning and frequent flier program consideration of its employees over a 5% reduction in fares on a different carrier.
Which is essentially the same as me saying that airlines are competing on price (as we agree on) and also their schedule and hard product and not anything else (corporate rebate deals notwithstanding). Mileage earning and FFP devaluations I don't think are very high on a corporate booker or one-a-year friends-family traveller list of priorities when making the purchasing decision.
EDIT: also, with major corporate deals such as the one your company has I presume, with thousands of tickets booked a year, the price that you see that is allocated out of your project/department budget may not in fact be the actual cost to the company as a whole, if there is some sort of rebate scheme in place - the rebate may just be booked in a different department as ancillary revenue or however your finance department wants to account for it. This may incentivise (as is the point) your corporate TA to make bookings that seem to be slightly more expensive, but actually end up being the same price (to the company) as less optimal connections