Raffles

Courtesy of The Times today, I can share with you exclusively some of the 'top ten tips' that the Business Travel Show will be trying to pursuade its visitors to take up. (NEC, 5-6 October)

So, if you're lucky, your travel co-ordinator will return from Birmingham clutching a bit of paper with the following hints on it:

1. Don't let your employees take taxis from the airport. Most airports have good public transport links.

2. Have the hotel mini-bar emptied before your employee arrives

3. Book with budget airlines for short-haul flights and lesser-known airlines for long-haul flights

4. Make your staff arrange their meetings around the cheapest travel arrangements

etc
etc

Truly these people live in a different world ....

Shuttle-Bored

Grrrrrrrrrr - why is it that the people who generally organise and set travel policy are (more often than not) those who don't travel????

PhilH

Oh dear. Sounds like "what steps can you take to make your leisure travel as cheap as possible". Idiots.

G-BOAC

PhilH and Shuttle-Bored - seconded! Idiots. The people who think up this kind of crap don't have to do back to back flights, mid-week day trips starting at 5am and ending at 11pm, quick overnighters for a meeting then back for another one, etc., etc. and simply have no idea Overpriced and ridiculous it may be...but cracking open a beer from a mini-bar after you've arrived 5hrs late on the 4th flight that week and the hotel bar/restaurant is closed is just about the only thing which will save me and let me get up again the next day! Take away my minibar, I'm going to hit room service twice as hard

Phil

Dave Noble

To be fair, the principles there do , to me, make some sense

Taking a Taxi rather than a train from an airport to city can take just as long and be more expensive. If an airport has decent public transport links, then it can make perfect sense to require it

Using lesser known airlines can also make sense in a way; if a company is just blindly booking one airline for all trips, they could save a fair bit of money by checking fares on other carriers. On the budget airline side, I would just decline to make a trip if that was suggested and save the company even more money

Not paying mini bar charges is hardly novel

and arranging meetings around availability makes sense where possible

Dave

edi-traveller

SOOOOO TRUE!!

Our latest travel idiot has done deals with "cheap" hotels in London - all of which are well away from where we do business - and some aren't even near Tube Stations. These people didn't even visit the hotel.

They are tucked up nice an warm in bed at 6am whilst I am being frisked by security at EDI airport.

They are having a nice lunch in the canteen or the pub whilst I am running down Chancery Lane eating a mars bar trying to get to my next meeting.

They are sat watching Corry whilst I am hoping that the red signal on the HEX line won't be red long enough to make me miss the last flight home of the day.

They are tucked up warm in bed with their partner whilst I am on my own in an airport hotel having just missed the last flight of the day and wishing I'd brought my toothbrush with me.

This really does make me madder than more or less anything else in the business world.

PhilH

The trouble with these "rules" are that every situation is different. OK, for arrivals into LHR, requiring the use of HEX, rather than a taxi, may make some sense. It is certainly cheaper, and certainly quicker, than taking a taxi into central London. But only if you're travelling into central London. But for example I went to LIN the other day. First time in Milan, no idea where I was going, don't speak a word of Italian, had to find a hotel that all I had was the name of it and the address. There was no way, no way at all that I was going to take public transport and mess around for a couple of hours finding the place when I can hop in a taxi and EUR 20 and ten minutes later I'm at the hotel. Malpensa is again different because it is a EUR 80 taxi fare, but there is a direct train into central Milan.

G-BOAC

Dave Noble - well, if you will go and apply a bit of sanity to it... Yes, in principle some sound like good ideas. But I want the flexibility to decide how I have to travel without taking the piss - I am a grown-up, I'm responsible as I expect my team to be too.

Will I take a taxi to LHR from London? Not unless I'm in a group of 3/4 or so all going the same way on our account so it's cheaper than HEX. That's common sense. Would I be happy with a flat rule "No taxis to/from airports" - no, because the people who make such a rule have no idea when/where/why a taxi may be appropriate and in which countries.

Do I think it's reasonable for the employee to empty their mini bar themselves? No! Do I think it's entirely reasonable to leave the bar there and stocked so the employee can get something if they really want/need it? Absolutely!

etc.

Arming travel bookers (note: not travellers) with a handy little crib sheet of "good" ideas is just asking for trouble!

Phil

Dave Noble

Thing is , although some (many) people consider things sensibly there are others who don't. I would posit that many companies who have people travelling have a few destinations which they visit primarily and it would be possible to design some sensible recommendations for travel to those locations.

for example, I know people who would just take a taxi to London from the airport despite the availability of decent train service to Paddington.

If used as principles then these can be sensible but to bring them in as the 10 commandments for all travel would just be dire

Dave

LHR Tim

IMHO what happened to Mussolini and Clara Petacci would be far too kind to what I'd like to see happen to travel policy managerrs. They are the most clueless people on earth who, as has been stated earlier, clearly do not travel. All they look at is how cheap your ticket was.

When we moved to a web based booking system, they were emphasising that we must always pick the cheapest ticket, even if it has restrictions and would be useless if changed. The pontificated how they saved £2000 pounds in the first month with the new system. I know for a fact that my department alone had nearly £3000 in rebookings -- but they don't put that in the figures do they.

Monkville

Sorry, most of what you write is complete rubbish.

Requirements, designed to be one size fits all, are inherently counterproductive. Generally what happens is that more blood and vitriol is expended defending an expense or (even worse) "making up for it". Guidelines are OK, and as far as I know most expense accounts still have to be approved by someone, usually a line manager, who knows when guidelines are applicable and when they are not.

It's really quite simple. Somtimes you use public transport in Gotham City to get to the airport, other times you'll take Gotham Taxis because you have luggage/a conference call/an inconvenient departure point. When you have a policy that says you must use the Gotham Transit Authority, you just breed resentment.

Sometimes you get a bottle of mineral water from the minibar, and sometimes you visit the local 7-11. When the hotels were charging $8 a beer in Moscow, I visited the local kiosks.

And don't get me started on low cost carriers. If those who set the "requirements" actually knew what was "required" on a particular trip (early departure, long security lines, queueing everywhere), they'd blow off meetings as well. They tried a LCC requirement at our firm for a while, but the backlash was so severe that it was reversed (at least for client visits) after about 3 months.

Disco Volante

Unless you want to go to Paddington, the HEX isn't that convenient. Its not much use for the City for example. If you have baggage or are unfamiliar with London, you are far better off with a cab.

irmster

having just returned to our UK office after 7 years, where the travel policy used to be really tight, I have been pleasantly surprised to see a few changes:

-All flights over 2 hours can be in Business class (used to be 4 hours - except US East coast which also had to be economy).

-Ad hoc expenditure (mini bar/movies etc) allowance of £5 per night or £10 overseas (used to be £0)

-Dedicated car service to airports

-Wide choice of 'preferred hotels' - generally 4*

House

This is the kind of nonsense that leads to conversations along the lines of:

"So you're booking me on SU to SVO. I'll need a car arranged to meet me then"

"Can't you use public transport?"

"What public transport?"

"The train"

"But there IS no train from SVO. There is one from DME, but SU don't fly there and you won't book me on BA because they are £30 more expensive"

[etc, etc]

Dave Noble

ooh...b1tchy...saucer of milk, table 1

As I said, the *principles* make sense. There is a big difference between taking principles and turning them into commandments.

Well, most places I have worked for have had either a per diem allowance and so they don't care what is charged since anything over the allowance is at your own cost or have done it based on receipts ; in this case, charges for mini bars are typically not chargeable. Going and having a bar emptied is OTT imo


And if you actually read what I wrote , you would have seen that I said

"On the budget airline side, I would just decline to make a trip if that was suggested and save the company even more money"

Dave