Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
The way company travel is booked makes a big difference, there must be 2 dozen ways of doing it. Here are just a few examples to highlight the issues:
1) Large company has inhouse travel, a multi-million dollar spend on BA, including access to BT/IT (bulk/inclusive Tours) ticketing. It pay via immediate direct debit or invoicing
2) Medium company outsources medium travel spend to CWT, Amex etc, with direct GDS access, payment by corporate credit card typically. Maybe has some deals with BA and different deals with other oneworld airlines.
3) Small company books travel on corporate credit card but it's in the name of the traveller, and is booked via BA.com
4) Very small company gets traveller to book themselves and claim back.
You won't get POUGs on 1 or 2, perhaps 3 too. You can't have an AUP on 1. You may be able to UUA 2, 3, 4. Now 4 and perhaps 3 is effectively the best option in this area since (e.g. you can call within 24 hours of booking and upgrade to WTP for just the fare difference and no change fee).
Essentially it's all about ticket ownership, Know Your Customer, and whether the fares are public/published or not. Option 4 is the only one guaranteed to have ticket ownership with BA, known BAEC customer and published fares. A BT/IT ticket is at the other extreme - perhaps ticketed on AA, perhaps a BT/IT fare, not published, payment detached from the traveller.
And as I say there are dozens of variants in between.
Duly educated, and appreciated, thanks. My business related travel (effectively) falls under 4), I hadn't appreciated the lack of flexibility that would come from e.g. 1)
Edit: thanks for also clearing up something that puzzled me. A year or two ago I was travelling fairly regularly on EDI-LHR-YUL with a colleague. I was getting regular POUG offers on the YUL-LHR leg while he never did (180 quid into W, 450 into J). The difference was he was an employee booked through the corporate TA, whereas I was contract and booking my own travel directly on BA.com, so I guess that explains it....