the company I work for falls under this rebate scenario with hotels and airfare. However the rebate goes back to the corporate level and is not allocated back to the individual business units. So If I'm given a travel budget in my FY operating plan and I can cut hotel costs in some cases by over 50% and hence keep my travel costs with in budget, I'm going to do that. Now if they allocated those rebates/credits back to my business unit in an equitable fashion, I might adhere to it the "preferred" lists a bit more. I speak more for hotels than airfare.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by dgolds:
I've definitely noticed this.
Another issue is that sometimes travel providers give rebates to companies depending on the amount of travel the company books. One client I worked for told me never to use another rental car company other than their preferred provider because of this. They said I might think I was saving the company a few bucks but actually I would end up costing them money.
I don't know if the hotel chains offer rebates or not, but I can almost always beat the corporate rate with a little shopping.</font>