cestmoi123

Our company (financial services, couple thousand employees) has a corporate account with Uber, and we're expected to use it when available. It's a choice on the app, direct bills to the company. Don't even have to file it in our expense reports.

zerolife

The purpose of Concur is that corporate rate is built into Concur, and many companies including mine require people to use corp. rate when possible. However the smart traveler knows the corp. code of his/her favorite hotel chain and books directly with the hotel.

Also I feel there is often the company policy and what people in general do, and they are not always aligned. My company requires all hotel/car rental to be booked through Concur, and require us to take taxi. There is even a limit on how far we can go with our personal car for a trip. However people book outside Concur and take Uber/Lyft all the time. The one thing I've never heard anyone do is Airbnb, we want the point and status lol

gglave

If I make an airline booking in Concur without a matching Concur hotel booking it is red-flagged as in violation of policy.

I have to explain why I have not booked the hotel through Concur.

Kagehitokiri

coloneltigh, airbnb 'sold' itself to Concur.. airbnb/etc attempt aggressive growth

re uber, blacklane lets one book airport transfers and uses 'limo' companies

as mentioned Concur more about policy than value

gglave

For the majority of a corporation's travellers, Concur delivers the beancounters both policy and value.

By forcing employees to book lower-priced hotels and lower-priced flights Concur keeps the beancounters happy.

Now certainly, an industrious employee might be able to find cheaper hotel options than the Hilton Garden Inn that concur might serve up, but those would be a small percentage of the overall travellers.

gglave

Had a bit of fun with my expense report this morning - On a recent business trip the city was Uber-less and the taxis were all busy so I used my Car2Go account to grab a car.

Total charges were $6.74 USD. Couldn't decide whether it went in the Concur expense system as "Taxi/Subway/Limo/Train" or "Rental Car."

In the end I chose "Rental Car."

At $6.74 it was probably the lowest rental car booking the system has ever seen.

Internaut

The bean counters love it when I use Uber.

ElmhurstNick

Back in Priceline's heyday, I was a heavy user for hotels. I was messing around with testing something out and put in dates for an upcoming trip and bid $1. And got something thanks to a $25 AMEX bonus.

Best part was that I had bid for 2 rooms, one for me, and one for a relative who was going to show up and meet me there, and we were going golfing for the weekend after that. So my receipt was for $7.40, and I asked for 50%, or $3.70.

My CFO was so stunned that she immediately exempted me from every policy about using our corporate travel agency.

Fun times back then.

pinniped

That's what I do on hotels: I know where our corp rates are, and I know how to compare them against other rates. Sometimes AAA is the best rate, sometimes our corp rate is.

When I've worked for larger companies that showed the airline discount directly in the fare being purchased, you *had* to use the corporate portal to get it: there was no way to just get the code and run it through AA.com or whatever. (Or, if there was, the code was well-hidden enough that people didn't directly know it.)

I figure if I'm ever asked to explain it, I'll just say "I booked outside of Concur to save us a ton of money." (To date, nobody has ever asked and I'm not even sure who *would* ever ask. I basically control my own division's budget, so if I go hogwild on travel I'm only shooting myself in the foot.) My choice of hotels is almost always well below our typical corp rate at the highest-level hotels we're regularly permitted to book.

gglave

I think that's probably the key difference - In my case and, I suspect, many others, the hotels Concur selects as in-policy in a given city are Hampton Inns, Hilton Garden Inn, Fairfield Inns and their like.

I could likely save a few dollars by booking those properties direct, but I would never save "a ton of money" - I would certainly never save enough to cause the company beancounters to start allowing exemptions to Concur on a case-by-case basis.

pinniped

Our travel destinations are more urban and suburban, so we tend to see a lot of the mainline Marriotts, Sheratons, Hiltons, etc. HGI is actually one of the brands I look for for certain stays - as long as I know it's a newer/clean one (which most of them are). Residence Inn is another: I'll trade a few Marriott points for a 1-bedroom suite on most stays.

There's also a double-whammy that a few bucks in bogus fees are tacked on by the travel agency when we book via Concur. So even if I'm just getting an equal rate (as I am with simple domestic airfares in most cases), Concur is worse. On international it sometimes comes out a *lot* worse - I had a trip earlier this year that Concur priced at $6,500 no matter how I tried to build it: United.com directly was $2,800. The flights involved some discounted-business class fare buckets, which is what our travel policy permits, but Concur seemed to only show the full-J fares.

mandolino

Corporate rates seldom make any sense for small businesses like my employer.
Almost always, booking it yourself is cheaper.