Corporate fare rules question
 

Hello,

Looking at fares for work through GetThere and am having trouble replicating them on any external website (Matrix, Orbitz, etc).

On GetThere, this is the fare info I'm getting:

However, attempting to replicate this fare on Matrix gives me a price that's $500 more:
what gives?? thanks for the help…

35% corporate discount on the fare?

The codes that yield company discounts are given to the travel agent/booking channel that employees are required to use..and as far as I know can't be replicated anywhere else. I've worked for 2 big companies in my life..both have had UA and other airline discounts.. and each time only the appointed travel agency had access to the discounts.

I just did a test booking in my company site and got the pricing for that same booking code YAZ14UPN for EWR-SFO.. booking into Z.. it was $1,284 for the one way... better than the full $1,514 normal published fare.. looks like you've got a bigger discount on that particular route/fare at your company. And the only way you'll get it is if you book through your assigned channel..unfortunately. The rule I've always heard..both here and at my former company...is that booking personal travel is prohibited even if paying with a personal card. I know it would be nice to be able to bypass the official channels for a number of self centered reasons (let's admit it)..but they do it so they can track their company spend which gives negotiating power when it comes time to talk about discounts the next year.

If I am reading this correctly, you are able to access a corporate discount through your employer's corporate TA which uses GetThere. You should not be able to replicate that fare anywhere else outside your organization's enrolled TA. That is part of your employer's contract with UA and the TA.

This is both to prevent fraud (employees booking personal travel using corporate rates unless the contract permits it) and to make sure that as part of the contract, the back office work is being done by the TA.

Why are you trying to replicate the fares when you have a perfectly functioning portal?

As noted, your fare YAZ14UPN/8N35 is not a published (to the world) fare, and you cannot book it except through your corporate TA. YAZ14UPN is a different, more expensive, fare.

thanks for the replies!

because GetThere is a terrible interface and to pick my flights I generally use matrix instead. In this particular case, there are various corporate rules about class of service, etc, and public pricing meant that a OW red-eye Biz + OW economy on the return cost more than an RT Biz ticket. Unfortunately when pricing on GetThere the red-eye biz dropped enough in price that this was no longer the case and I could not book the RT in Z. So, I want to replicate the fares so that I can use my own tools (matrix) to plan trips.

as a side note, can someone explain the corporate fare to me? the fare basis starts with a Y…but the booking code is Z? the fare is labeled as "OW-ECONOMY RESTRICTED"…but actually books into business? huh?

It's a Z fare... or it really should be. For whatever reason, United publishes its domestic non-differential premium fares using Economy basis letters. For the fare YAZ14UPN, which is a regular published fare, the Z in third position is the booking code, and the UP in sixth/seventh position indicates it's essentially a premium fare. Because it has a Y in first position, the fare header sometimes says "Economy Restricted" or similar and may be categorized as such by your booking engine. But it is, and ought to be treated as, a Z fare for all useful purposes.

The corporate part of the fare is just the /8N35, which references the corporate discount to the base fare (which is probably 35%).

For more context: A Comprehensive Look at Domestic First Class Monetization (FCM) on United

As noted, Matrix doesn't have the corporate fare and it is technically a completely different, unique fare.

It's important to be clear, that just because the fare basis code is the same between the two does not mean that the two fares will have the same rules/restrictions and pricing behaviors. They are technically independent fares.

My corporate booking site also had a 4 digit code after the YAZ14UPN which I believe ended in 20...and that would make sense based on what I was offered through Concur, $1,284.. the published fare on ExpertFlyer for YAZ14UPN is $1,603.

For your purposes, none of it matters. Essentially, your employer has negotiated a deal where for x% off, you are booked into a seat in C. Because the code can't be used anywhere outside of your employer's enrolled corporate TA's chosen interface, you are really seeing more information than you need to see.

You can use other search engines, including, .com, for the purpose of researching routing, but you will always have to return to GetThere to determine whether what you want can be done under the rules your employer has set and for the price point you (or your employer) is willing to pay.

35% discount on Z fare basis fare. That's a great contract.

would these be considered bulk fares?

Yes..I did a couple further dummy bookings.. we get 35% off C and F fares.. I didn't check any others. But 35% for Z is great..

No. There are no differences whatsoever in the fare rules or fare codes and they are not bulk fares...bulk usually means they are purchased in blocks...such as for cruises or to be sold by a consolidator. Corporate discount tickets like the ones we're talking about in this thread are not bought in bulk. They are just discounted based on a contract with the airline for a period of time..a year or two...and the discounts are applied to normal published fares. The discount these days is usually high..like 35%.. for premium fares..and is as low as 2% for the cheapest economy fares.

hmm, my last ticket i bought through my corporate amex was bulk. it was a pain. i coudln't do any changes or anything when i called UA. so i'm trying to figure out what made it bulk. when i asked them, they said "you kept asking for a cheaper price, so we found this magical corporate discount fare" which sounded exactly what was described above. so i'm still scratching my head trying to understand.