UA Corporate Leisure rate - United Corporate Direct, "Break from Business" Issues?
 

I'm enrolled in United Corporate Direct through my employer, which provides a small discount on most United fares when traveling for business. We're prohibited from using these fares for personal travel. There is a box to check if you're traveling on business, otherwise you get public rates for personal travel.

Today, for the first time, when in the normal personal travel mode I got fares that said "corporate leisure" and were discounted versus the otherwise publicly available fares. There was also a message at the top saying "Corporate Leisure travel must include the account holder."

Sadly, I didn't book immediately, and now while that message is still showing at the top, it's not showing me discounted fares anymore.

Has anyone ever seen this before? Is it a new program? Presumably since it says "leisure," the fares can be used for personal travel?

I’ve never seen it before, but after seeing your post I thought I would give it a shot. Seems like I’m getting this too! $278 leisure rate, $307 without. Unfortunately I’m too new here to be able to post a screenshot.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ec50b4c41e.png

Off topic but wow, $800 business round trip on midweek SFO-EWR

Disappeared for me earlier but is back now. Maybe an October 1 rollout of a new promo?

Fare rules are interesting:

I haven't seen it before, but I'm seeing it now.

I have no idea what UA is intending to offer, but considering not only the word "Leisure," but also that these appear specifically when I indicate, in United's software, that I'm not traveling for business, I wouldn't feel the least bit hesitant about taking advantage of these for personal travel, if I were inclined to buy a ticket at all.

Incidentally, I haven't done any widespread testing, but on the first route that I checked, the discounts under this program are substantially better, at least on deep-discount fares, than my company's corporate rate. (???) I'm seeing numbers similar to what nexus7556 reported, of approximately 10% off, even on a K fare; my company's discount for K fares is nowhere near that generous.

Why not ask your corporate travel and the corporate TA? I have to presume that UA marketed this to its corporate customers and their TA's as a cost-free (to the employer) benefit of UA. As jsloan notes, I can't imagine that a rate explicitly noted as "leisure" can't be used for leisure.

If it's a better rate (with the exact same fare rules) as your business discount, no reason not to take advantage of it for business as well, although I would be surprised if there isn't something in the fare rules which makes the business travel bucket "better".

I'm not 100% sure I'd trust my corporate travel agency to know anything about this program. :) But it couldn't hurt to ask.

Here, I disagree entirely. There is no way that I would ever uncheck the box that says "business travel" and then purchase travel for business purposes. That would be a pretty clear abrogation of the contract on my part, and I can't image either UA or corporate travel would be very happy with me. (Actually, I'm pretty sure we're required to book through the Concur portal anyway, in order to show that we considered all preferred carriers). If these discounts, at this scale, are intentional, I have to think that they'd go away quickly if UA found that people were buying them for business travel.

BTW, after a little bit more searching: it seems that these fares exist through the end of the schedule, for domestic* travel, but not international. And, the discount extends to first class; I'm seeing a discount off of P fares that appears to be similar to the discount off of K fares. Unsurprisingly, requires flights operated by United or United Express; if you have, e.g., a Cape Air segment, the fare isn't available.

* UA's definition of domestic; includes Hawaii but not Guam. Does appear to include Puerto Rico.

United just responded to me - this is a new program and indeed for personal travel.

W:eek:w, that's a lot better than any corporate rate I've ever seen.

That's why I'm wondering whether or not it was intentional. :) It seems too good to be true. (I would have been pleasantly surprised just to be able to use our corporate rates for personal travel :) )

Imagine explaining to one's corporate customer that you will sell a product to its employees for less than to you. This has to be an early-on glitch. Particularly if one considers that if it's available to the employee, it's also available to others he chooses to book, so long as he is traveling.

This has a HUGE impact for me - my HNL-SFO round trips are reduced about $100, getting as low as $276 in regular economy

Corporate "business" rates, while higher may come with a kickback at EOY to the corporation. Leisure rates wouldn't have that kickback. Basically UA is giving that credit to the employee directly. Also, businesses are committing to a certain amount of corporate spend and if people used the leisure option that wouldn't count toward the required spend, which would erode the discount and impact the kickback. Important to book business rate for business trips and leisure rate for personal trips.

And in that spirit... maybe they want the leisure numbers in that spend (sure it may bring down an average). IME when PerksPlus raised the yearly spend requirement in the late 2000's we were barely making the old number, so we started letting employees book personal trips. Sadly it was not enough.