Consulting Firm's Travel Policies And Perks
 

Which consulting firms have the best travel policies? By travel policy I mean: (fly first or business class, stay in 4 or 5 star hotels). Feel free to add any other perks that consulting firms give to their consultants.

I work for a large firm that may have its "policies," but the best approach is "whatever you can get your client to pay for" within the market in which you operate -- i.e., within reason, price-competitiveness, and prudent business practices. When I am spending my company's money, as opposed to my client's, I am more frugal.

I agree with mecabq. A lot just depends on the client. A lot also depends on what type of consulting (Strat consulting firms being biggest spenders overall).

Deloitte has a pretty good travel/expense policy. And of course, PWC, Bain, Boston, EY, and McKinsey as well.

Regards,
Mike

Interesting second post...welcome golfguylsu

The higher the billing rates, the more generous the travel policy. :)

What kind of consulting are you talking about? E.g., IT, strategy, etc. Care to name specific firms? I'd wager that many people on FT work at each of the big firms.

Thank You For The Welcome
 

This is one of the most interesting sites on the internet. The members are very helpful.

As far as what firms I thinking of, I'm more interested in the business strategy aspect of consulting work.

I agree with the above comments, it is more like 'which firm has the best clients that are willing to pay for travel expenses'.

The higher charging firms have better and more consistent travel policies. Within some smaller firms, travel policies can vary from project to project. The bigger and more profitable the project, the less scrutiny there is against travel expenses.

NB: And who might the higher charging firms be? Bain, McKinsey

Yes, the higher charging business/strat firms are usually PWC, Bain & Co, Boston Consulting Group, EY, McKinsey, & Mercer. For IT usually Accenture, BearingPoint, and IBM.

A lot also depends on the length of the project and the industy (of the client) as well.

Regards,
Mike

smaller firms
 

I'm the CEO of a smallish consulting firm and we only apply what we get paid by the client. This year I've charged back international first, business and economy flights; 3-4-5+ hotels and pier diems from 0-250+ per day. If travel is 'included' in fees - we try to use discount air & accom.

I've worked for 2 smaller IT consulting firms (I'm indie now), and I'm a technical consultant (i.e., not sales).

For someone like me, the 2 firms I've been with are also in the "whatever the customer will pay for" camp, but they also lived in mortal fear of having to explain any possibly-questionable expenses to the customer, so they have tended to still be cheapskates and err on the side of "let's not incur that expense just in case the customer might complain". Result: Hampton Inn and Fairfield Inn class hotels...even a Courtyard might be considered extravagant.

As for travel expenses incurred on company time/dime, both firms I was with were worse than their worst customers. "Oh my God, WE have to pay for that??? Uh, maybe you can use the Supershuttle to travel the 40 miles from the airport out here to the suburbs. Oh, and don't worry about dinner after work, you can walk to the 2 nearby restaruants and then just walk back to your motel for the night, right?"

I couldn't make this up.

I work for one of the above listed firms (but privacy concerns keep me from naming it specifically on a public forum. If you guess it, please don't post it here but feel free to PM me.)

I am not a consultant. But the basic rules are:

1. Stay in a hotel close to where you need to be, typically 4 star hotels, specifically if you don't have a rental car. (I've had to stay in the occasional Ritz-Carlton)

2. Coach class airfare at the lowest fare class, UNLESS you are flying international on a 7 hour + flight, in which case you book business class.

3. Park in a safe, conveniant place at the airport. No need to save the $5 and park at an off-site lot.

4. Take the safest and / or most cost effective travel to your hotel. Like for Chicago, I usually take the train in from MDW UNLESS I land at night, in which case I take a cab. From LGA in NYC, I take a car service.

5. When traveling WITH the client, travel as they do. If they are staying in a two star hotel, you do. If they are flying first class, you fly coach. ;) Unless they state it.

6. Decent meal policy, around $35 a day, unless you are a manager then it is actual cost. I've NEVER had an issue though, and I am not a manager. They recognize that things cost more sometimes.

7. Frequent flyer and hotel points are all mine.

8. Ability to expense snacks, non-alcoholic drinks, newspapers, tips, (all within reason...) We used to get a set amount to cover it all.

[QUOTE=james318;7364065]I work for one of the above listed firms (but privacy concerns keep me from naming it specifically on a public forum. If you guess it, please don't post it here but feel free to PM me.)

I am not a consultant. But the basic rules are:

...............QUOTE]

That's pretty dead on with my situation as well. We book coach class, but most of us get the free first class upgrades since we fly so much (twice a week). Our per diem's are usually a little better, depending on the location of the project. For example, it's $45 on my current one. We do get rental cars, but we typically stay at a hotel like a Marriott or Hilton Homewood Suites - something along those lines for long-term projects, and a nicer place if the stay is for less than a week or two.

I can guess which company it is that you worked for.... ;) Bet you can't guess mine!..... :D ha/ha

Regards,
Mike

Yeah, I almost always fly first due to status. It's nice travelling with higher ups who don't get the upgrade and you do... Luckily the group I work for recognizes the reasoning and doesn't throw a fit. :) I've never EVER had to worry when I went over my per diem, though most meals are usually covered by other team members because I am the least senior. :)

On average, I stay at Westin/W/Sheraton/Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt's. Only when location dictates do I stay at less, as all my trips are short. I don't seek these out, but these are the number one choices listed on our travel booking engine, so I take em!

Hmmm... Wondering if we work at the same place.... Do we?

Wow, my husband's per diem is $100 a day. He had a per diem of $35 a day back in 1999. He workd for a European comapny though, so maybe this why he gets such a generous per diem.

Probably not.... I didn't list my firm's name in the post. :) Feel free to PM me though to make sure. ^

Yes, it all depends on location, industry, and what all is included in the per-diem. For me personally, the per-diem is for food only. On the West Coast, our per diem is usually $75. But where I am now, the cost of living isn't as high so it's $45. If we don't spend $45 a day, then we just keep it. It's basically included in our expense reimbursements. Regardless of whether you actually use/spend it or not. But if the "per-diem" is meant to include more than just food then it will be more (like, if it's meant for groceries/living arrangements/etc).

Regards,
Mike

Full C/J (unless client requests F, which has yet to happen to me), 4-5* hotels (have contract partners in commonly visited cities), car services, $75 per diem not including client entertainment expenses. But that's for an ibank, not a consulting firm, but same basic idea.

I don't work for a consultancy firm but have a lot of consultants working for me on various projects and from various firms (some of them mentioned in previous posts). Whenever they need to travel they have to stick to the travel policy of my company, regardless of what their own firm's tarvel policy might be.
Reasons are cost control and preventing that the consultant travels "more luxurious" and/or with better perks than a regular employee of my company would.

Consultants have to submit their travel expenses the same way as regular employees: so not to be included in the monthly bill, but through a seperate travel expense form which is processed by our finance department. Expenses are reimbursed to the traveller, not his firm.

So far this has worked without any problems.

That does sound like a very effective and straight forward expense/travel process. ^ It probably also helps the schedule remain in tact (as to not having to change flight schedules after the flights have already been booked, etc.). Are meals reimbursed for actual costs or do the consultants for you get a standard daily per-diem amount to use as they wish? Which have you found to be fiscally better for you as a client?

Regards,
Mike

I work for a IBM Global Business Services....and while the perks arent amazing, they're sufficient (I'm also a new college grad...so having anyone pay for my hotel/meals is great. I'm guessing some of the older/more experienced consultants think otherwise).

We have to fly coach...unless the flight is like 6 hrs or longer (so international flights in business only pretty much). Per diem is the government rate per city..and we have a list of hotels that we are able to choose to book from. They are mainly all Hilton properties, that IBM has an IBM rate with. If all of these hotels are booked, or do not have the IBM rate available, then you can book anywhere, with your price point being the IBM rate of the most expensive hotel in the list for that area.

EDIT: also when booking flights, you cannot specify the airline. You give the times you want to leave and return, and the program finds the cheapest fare within a 2 hr window.

Same story here, but I've always been able to guide the program by choosing a departure time that's closest to the particular flight I want to take. Now let's keep in mind that the price differential has not been more than $20 between my "guided" choice and what the program would have selected, and my firm has always applied a vague "reasonableness" test as to which flight should have been taken.

At any rate, my weekly fare is still about 50% of the weekly fare that my colleagues pay to fly in from Florida, Texas, and California, so I'm not really bothered by the extra $20.

I'm an independent consultant (dba Full Course Communications) for a professional sports car racing team, reporting directly to the team owner and team manager.

1. I stay in the same hotel as the team, generally a Hampton Inn-class establishment. Some races, like Mexico City, get five-star joints. I also generally share a room with a teammate. (So does everybody, except my bosses.)

2. I book discount coach airfare, with flight timing/routing/airline at my discretion, within reason. Essentially, I try to be no more expensive than the rest of the team, with exceptions (team's in Dallas, I'm in SF, so sometimes flights are just going to be more...) Upgrades are at my discretion and my expense.

4. I generally take airport shuttles to/from the airport, which are expensed to the team.

5. I get a $35-per-day cash per diem when I'm on-site, which is almost always more than enough. At least two meals a day are provided at the track, sometimes three, and when I eat with the owner, he picks up the tab. Anything I don't spend, is mine to keep.

6. I keep all frequent-flyer miles as a perk of the job.

7. Reasonable business expenses (newspapers, Internet access, etc.) are also expensed.

I used to work for Boston Consulting Group in Switzerland and they were very generous. Although, I was the one booking the trips, not taking them :D

It depended on the position of the travelling consultant. But business class was normal, first only for partners (and their wives, what surprised me sometimes a bit...hell, why??). Wives of partners were usually a bit of a pain in the a$$ (sorry, just telling the truth). They were never satisfied with anything, did not matter if it concerned hotelrooms or airlines or seats on the airplane or whatever...:rolleyes:

The non-alcoholic thing always strikes me. I could care less what an employee drinks, it's the cost I care about not the ingredients.

Frequently when my co-workers are ordering $20+ entrees at dinner, I'm having a $7 sandwich (it's, quite frankly, my preference). Even with a beer or two, I'm coming in quite a bit less than the entree-with-water person.

Excluding alcoholic beverages from expensed items is quite puritanic.....and idiotic.

Agreed, and I say that as the person with final authority where I work for what we pay out on and what we don't.

I had a supervisor want me to back them up on denying a meal reimbursement because it included 3 beers. Now, we're pretty cheap in some ways... if it's just employees / no outside folks, so the meal is just sustenance then we consider $25 reasonable and over $35 will get flagged. (What we'll reimburse though is always context dependent -- if there's a reason to justify the expense, there really is no cap at all.) But for the sustenance meal for an employee on the road, we don't have nutrition guidelines. Guiness drinks like a meal, and as long as you're not pounding down several of those and then driving a rental car that's being billed to the company... (And you show up to perform - of course - if drinking interferes with work then it's an issue.)

There are things we won't reimburse, of course. Anything that's illegal isn't reimbursable (use your own disposable income for that, and don't consume it on company time, on company property, or in company-rented facilities)...

But as long as alcohol is legal and you aren't going overboard on total expense, it's fine. (This is an issue our auditors actually flagged for me one year, they were like 'does your policy really allow this?' and I told them where they could go.)

I also work for one of the above (sortuv) and this all sounds about right. Everything within reason. Stay safe and comfortable. Premium cabins only on long international flights or as a partner/senior exec.

Does the program have some "reasonableness"? I.e. will it choose the non-stop flight that costs $5 more than the flight with a 45 minute connection at ORD on a day when a snowstorm is about to hit? Or do you have to manipulate it to avoid it giving you a likely multihour delay / misconnection / cancellation to save $5?

A sensible flight chooser ought to favor fewer connections, due to increased travel time (consultant's time is either money charged to the client, or time that the consultant can rest / relax, which can make the consultant happier and more productive). Since removing a connection saves about 2 hours of travel time, a flight with an extra connection should be given a 2 * hourly rate penalty (or larger if the actual additional travel time is larger than 2 hours) by a sensible flight chooser, and connections through high risk airports like ORD should be given an additional penalty.

It's the official stated policy. Whether folks follow it or not is another story. :D

Since we don't have to turn in the itemized receipt (just the actual credit card slip with the total), no one is the wiser if you have a few beers with a cheap dinner or what not.

Not that I'D ever do that... at every Chili's Too across the country... ;)

the booking system online goes with the cheapest fare...whether it is direct or not. you have to manipulate it (can either choose 2 hr policy be departure time or arrival). It will still display you the other fares, and you can select one and book it. Most likely, you'll just need to write a note when you submit the expenses and explain why you chose the more expensive fare...guessing it would be approved, not really sure.

The cheapest flights are always direct for me....so I've never had this issue. If it were the case for me, I'd email my manager and explain the situation.

The academic research bodies in Canada used to (still do?) prohibit grant money being spent on alcohol. It leads to ridiculous situations where the bill has to be split and then sent to 2 different cost centres, or else split between the hosts personal accounts!!

With our current academic limit for entertaining guests, we go over if we order a bottle of wine, and the academic has to eat the extra costs themselves :(.

Probably won't be an issue in my new job :).

Thanks,

Dr. PITUK

Picky, picky, picky.

But it does have some real world consequences.

We can't reimburse for a parking ticket, for instance.

Now -- there used to be a regular meeting I had to attend in DC where the parking garage was more than the ticket for expired meter (meter time limit was less than the time of the meeting). And the garage was often full in any case. So it made sense to park there and pay the fine....

I could take a reimbursement for the fine, though the more expensive parking would have been OK.

The way I handle that situation is if it's significant I'll bonus the person for the grossed up amount in order to make them whole... but I can't do a tax free reiimbursement.

I've submitted parking tickets before :)

Are you saying that even if the consulting firm is willing to eat the difference between the fare that their travel policy allows (let's say full J) and the fare that your company permits (let's say Y), your company would still force the consultant to fly the lower class of service?

My thoughts too!

I used to travel regularly for a company I worked for from 1986 - 1993 and our hotel was paid for by the company and then we had a $50. per diem daily for food and incidentals. And this was a conservative company, not big spenders.

They paid for coach, but all of our flying was domestic, so I used miles to upgrade.

I work for a consulting major and tend to fly fully flexible economy or business because of the likelhood of having to change things at short notice.

Hotels tend to be solid Hiltons and Marriotts and the like. One of the benefits of being abroad is that with premium hotel status and lounge access, per diems do go further.

A life on the road has many drawbacks, but I earned over 1 Million miles last year.

I run a small consulting firm. We negotiate our travel arrangements with our clients. They typically are first domestically and business internationally except for short flights (2 hours). For the two founders of the firm, we sometimes do first internationally as well, but negotiate this up front. We typically stay at the decent hotel that is nearest to the client office. Ocassionally, a firm has a strict policy on travel -- all officers fly coach in the US. If the CEO flies coach, so do we. On the other hand, one client is willing to pay for my family or my partner's family to fly to Australia when we come work with them, because we are pretty busy and it is an awfully long trip.

Ocassionally, a client asks us to use their travel agent to get their negotiated discount (and thus their airlines) if their travel agent can get a deal that is better than what we can get and doesn't cause a big inconvenience. Last year, I flew BA a lot as a result. [I am actually surprised that more clients don't do this, but am glad that they don't]. The main client that does this is in the Fortune 10 and remarkably about half the time, we can get an equally good business class fare through our travel agent/Kayak etc. This same client in our most recent contract decided that they wouldn't reimburse for the minibar (but would for room service) and didn't want to reimburse for laundry (but gave in on this). It didn't have to do with us, but still seemed awfully silly.

We have no real limits on meals, but generally try to be reasonable.

Our firm's policies are pretty simple - we are employee owned and have around 200 employees, probably 1/3 travel at least a few days each month, but very few people travel more than 12-13 days each month. 95% of our work is for domestic government agencies.

1. If your customer has travel policies and you weren't able to negotiate a lump-sum contract instead of a cost-based contract, you have to follow their rules. That usually means keeping to the state or federal government rate on hotels, even if hotels won't offer you the rate as a consultant.
2. No buying domestic F tickets unless it's the cheapest option (as some Y-up fares can be from time to time). We have very few overseas projects, and airfare terms on those are generally contract specific.
3. Don't be stupid.

That's it. I've been with them for twelve years in two cities. I've flown my preferred airline probably 85% of the time, Southwest another 10% (for walk-up tickets on flights under 500 miles when the majors are out of matching capacity or only have a CRJ-200), and have never had a middle seat. These days, my group's client location profile lines up best with Hilton, our target hotel is a Homewood Suites (suburban), Embassy Suites (urban), or Hampton (rural). I'll still use Priceline for some cities on fixed price projects, but not as much as I used to during the early days when hotel managers were downright clueless and gave the rooms away.

I rent full size cars, or an SUV if it's within 10%, but I rent from any one of five different major companies (Hertz, Budget, National, Thrifty, Avis) depending on the city and the deal. Dinners tend to depend on the team but probably average out to $35/night at client sites, and $20/night when visiting other offices - receipts needed for $25+. No reimbursement for tips, laundry, newspapers, etc. $40/month towards cellphone usage, iPass for wireless hotspots such as airport lounges, and any in-room HSIA charges.

The only annoying rule we have imposed upon us by our auditors is that you can spend $35 on dinner, but you can't spend $15 on a baseball ticket and $10 on dinner during the game. I enjoy going to minor league baseball and hockey games, but I always end up having to eat that out of my own pocket.

The lower per diem's today can also be attributed to growing competition. If 3 firms are bidding on a single offer and they want to lower costs, the first thing they're going to lower is the consultants' per diems. After that, comes the consultants' accomodations, rental car agreements, etc.

I'm sure many have faced this issue in the last 5 years. Especially those that are more on the IT/ERP side.

There are so many differences in travel policy from one firm to the next. I guess that I should probably consider myself lucky that I can choose my own airline, rental car company, book my own tickets, etc.