World Traveller Fuss

For those FT'ers who manage their own travel budgets, I'm curious how you tackle calculating budgets for the year.

The ideal situation is traveller's discretion over as many variables as possible. Trips, routes, class of travel etc. (not that we're all TP running suits, but sometimes our choices might not make sense to a non-FF, non-BAEC colleague).

How do you calculate and manage your travel budget?

megaloman

Google spreadsheet.

Stampy

Excel spreadsheet.

I'm virtually on excel on a daily basis - be it for work, budgeting, organizing information, etc.

florens

Excel too, here.

fin_dg

Corporate Travel policy dictates most terms and I have a reasonably fixed long haul and short haul itinerary. I look at the average trip cost over a 12month period incl. flights, hotels, hire car, cabs, meals etc. and use that to budget every planned future trip plus 1 spare per quarter. Overs and unders generally work out over the course of year and like others...all done in a spreadsheet.

duvin

I take last years costs and add 5-10% to be on the safe side

snaxmuppet

I don't fly for business so I ask the wife how much I can spend

G-ARVE

You tell your wife?! First and main rule in one's budget management is to not let on how much it's going to cost, and on occasions, be a little economical with the truth regarding where one is going. The latter prevents the 'why' question which is, well, sometimes difficult to answer....

gustavmahler

While my wife is very happy for me to find all the deals, she is an FD (and in charge of our budget), so nothing gets past her. To convince her on ex-EU J I need to demonstrate that the premium over ex-UK Y is not significant. We both still do some education work, and so school holidays are often when we travel to see her family in the US. This has worked out to my advantage in the past; "look, economy is £980 from London to Miami, and Club from Dublin is the same price. We can have a nice day in Dublin just the two of us - it'll be like another trip"! This used to be easier pre £ devaluation.

We often will have two trips to the US together, so the other argument I have been able to use is that 1 ex-EU in J + 1 241 in F = 2 ex-UK Y, but in order to have the Avios for the 241, we need to book a cash J fare. Again, this was easier a couple of years ago.

I would always need show her a spreadsheet of options and costings!

T8191

As leisure pax, we just have a vague overall cost in mind. Save on flights, spend more on hotels, that sort of thing. They all seem to come out costing roughly the same for l/h, and if it looks more expensive than usual we just don't do it. As long as the Domestic P&L remains positive, we just keep booking things

tinkicker

Depends!

Most projects are a "cost plus travel" format and then either we book own travel and bill at cost or they arrange the travel (in some form of biz class for anything over a few hours).

Some projects where we own the flight / hotel price risk... I spend some time on ITAMatrix figuring likely travel costs and break points... say the direct flight costs from A to B are about £3K and we need 5 trips for a task with 3 people on each trip. I think with careful booking during sales, using ex-eu, staying the odd Saturday night, some 60 day advance fares etc we can get under £2K
We can be in a competitive tender where we have to keep our overall price down but also don't want to annoy the team by making them take an extra day or go via 3 different stopovers. So lets plan on £2.5K per flight.

For hotel + Subs I use the HMRC worldwide subs rates as a marker then add a bit as they're slightly out of date (say 10%) do some cross checking with hotel booking sites.

Add it all up and we have a project travel budget, call it 100% and a target of say 80%.

We're sensible people, it's nice to travel in Biz and stay in great hotels and eat fab food... but the numbers have to make sense, mainly they do and I kinda enjoy figuring the most cash efficient routings while still flying on a limited set of airlines.

Oh and if we're getting over target or there is some sort of external shock (sudden currency change, massive fuel surcharge) then it's back in Econ for me and anyone else kind enough to sit with me...

TWA884

Folks,

The Travel Tools forum is the new home of this thread.

Please confine your remarks to apps, websites, software and services that can be helpful to calculate and manage travel budgets.

Thank you,

TWA884
Travel Tools moderator

cansutravel

I use excel sheet