I have a question that may not exactly fit here but I don't know where else to ask it...

I need to book an overseas trip for a group of 10+ people (company travel from EU to US and back). My company has had a Business Extra account with AA for many years, so we have "officially" been corporate customers for AA but only ever used Business Extra to get points credited and use the points for travel benefits. But since this will be an approx. USD15-20k purchase for the group (just for the flights), I wondered if I can get a better price (corporate/group discount) by calling the Business Extra service desk and booking through them, as opposed to just booking on the website.

Does anyone know if I can expect any kind of a discount by calling them? If so, what can I expect and/or how to ask to get the best offer from them?

We have been pretty loyal with all our travel to OW through American, but currently SkyTeam (Delta/KLM) has a much better rate for the trip than what's on offer from any of the OW airlines.

Also, I will need to book hotels and even a cruise (yes, really - it will actually be a corporate planning trip for our company including a one week Caribbean cruise) for the entire group, so I wonder if that weighs in in any way with all the airlines pimping hotels and cruises these days...

I would prefer to fly OW, but if I add it all up, we are talking about a total around $40k (including flights, hotels and cruise) and the difference adds up to several thousands of dollars (SkyTeam being the cheaper), so I'm questioning if our loyalty makes sense in this situation - or if I can make American compete for our business in this case.

Any thoughts?