Originally Posted by
olouie
The $9,000 is temporary due to covid. Its $15,000 otherwise. So what I would expect is them to raise it because simple enough to do when covid is messing with everything. Then they will give a temporary reduction like they did this year. No reason to drag it out yet another year if they think the market is strong enough for them to do changes.
The other thing that people are missing is that these new EQD would be reduce or get ride of the milage requirement entirely as well. Look to UA for inspiration.
It's interesting. The Company that I just left was one that decided that anything that could be handled in person now could be done by Zoom/MS Teams, etc. Despite it being a disaster. Yet management saw it as an "in" to winning business by saying "here at Company ABC we do everything by virtual now so you won't have to pay for consultant travel." One major reason I left was that doing key touchpoints by virtual was a total cluster f$ck. But it's hard to put a dollar amount on that and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. Most senior managers are too myopic to understand anything outside of an Excel document.
The Company I just joined is really trying to get back to travel but we're still having pushback. Some clients are good with it but many want virtual. Some I suspect want to use COVID as an excuse for cutting costs (where have we've seen this before?).
At least in the interim period I don't see travel returning to 2019 levels, and even after and IF COVID fear porn ever subsidies. Airlines might have to completely rethink loyalty programs-as well as their entire business model.