abligh

As of a week or so ago, when I log in to BA I no longer see on their home page two choices of booking method ("Flights" and "Multi-city") but three ("Flights", "Multi-city", and "Corporate booking") and I see to the right of these the new text "Connected to SAP Concur" (the expensing system my work uses which also offers to book flights, hitherto always more expensively than I can find on the internet elsewhere, which I am permitted to do). I guess the connection is made because I gave Concur my BAEC number.

What is a "corporate booking"? Experimentation to date shows (a) I appear not to be able to use "Corporate booking" to do multi-city routes (just one way and returns), and (b) It's somewhere between $0 and $20 cheaper than BA's web site on transatlantic J (despite the fact that the amount my employer spends, albeit through travel agents and untraceably as individual employees are booking, I would guess to be significant).

So, if should I ever find a non-trivial discount:

• Does using "corporate booking" have any disadvantages (e.g. fewer tier points, Avios)?
  
• Assuming I'm not breaching any employer rules (I think these only apply to booking through the employer's portal where my employer pays but will check - this appears to just take any old credit card) is there a reason not to use it for personal travel? I suppose I'm asking "are BA giving me a discount because I work for my employer" or is something else going on?

corporate-wage-slave

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about the specifics of your company's arrangements with BA, nor do I know much about Concur, I wasn't aware of there being a direct IT link with BA.com.

You should get the same Avios and TPs as a conventional bookings, taking into account your deal may relate to specific booking classes (e.g. D rather than say C booking class). Indeed it may work to your advantage in that the fare you see, a few dollars cheaper than a public fare, could be in a higher bucket than that public fare and may tip a few extra Avios your way, and TPs in Economy.

Again I don't know the specifics of your arrangement but I do know that BA have told some trade customers that it's OK for their employees to use the rates for personal use, indeed some employees may have access to a Closed User Group area of BA.com, with its own password, which gets to those fares. This would be where work related travel was perhaps handled separately e.g. via an in-house agency or intranet.

The usual benefit is low change fees and the ability to get time restricted tickets later on. So if there is are several D fares, one may normally have a 2 weeks minimum purchase time, another fare much more expensive can be ticketed up to 48 hours before departure - the deal may be you get the cheaper fare but with the 48 hour cut-off. The biggest disadvantage of these arrangements is that while you can still UuA in many cases, if it's a clean BA metal booking with few complications, you won't get a POUG offer.

abligh

Thanks - interesting. I shall try it next time I have a straightforward work trip. I normally book in J and don't have a lot of interest in a paid upgrade to F.

toothy

I use Concur a lot and they have been integrating with different providers so your receipts automatically appear as expenses in concur. e.g. my Uber trips automaically appear in there. This link basically says that BA have linked up to Concur to automatically put any bookings booked directly on ba.com into Concur.


T

Ancient Observer

BA's arrangements with large corporates vary enormously.
I would encourage anyone in a corporate to have a chat with the relevant person in purchasing/procurement or whatever they call themselves nowadays.
I have some strange/funny stories about different corporates, but my typing skills are not good enough to tell them. Suffice it to say that some corporates are at least as daft as BA.

lorcancoyle

GOTBound

Anyone know how I remove the SAP Concur connection? I no longer travel a lot with BA or OW for business, almost only private travel.

VSLover

see my thread here on the nightmare it can cause! BA and Concur post #10 is most helpful. it made a nightmare for me because while we can use the corp policies for personal travel, the link to concur on ba.com will make it appear as a travel agent booking to BA which in this new environment of frequent cancellations made it a bit of a mess to ring BA for continual changes because they'd insist it was a travel agent booking despite the charges, receipts and booking being done entirely on ba.com

now to the OP, multi-city can only be price in concur or depending on your company on google flights as you may see a toggle at the bottom of the screen showing corp bookings. but there is no advantage really, if anything in this covid environment, i've only found disadvantages having a concur link as noted above--and again at least right now, the corp rates are not less than standard public fares, especially in premium classes.