Timeline for Why would a company want me to book a flight via a travel agent if it is more expensive?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| S May 20, 2016 at 5:00 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
missing word?
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| May 20, 2016 at 1:19 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 20, 2016 at 5:00 | |||||
| May 19, 2016 at 20:33 | comment | added | Yakk | @Ketura Travel loyalty club style rewards are designed to encourage people who are not travelling on their own dime to change their choice of hotel/flight/etc to gain personal benefits, even if it isn't optimal for the institution who is paying for it. It also encourages frequent flries on their own dime to default to one carrier, and not min/max each time, but that effect is not as strong or as profitable. You repeatedly choosing to stay at the Hilton instead of the 5$ cheaper place 5 minutes closer to maintain your status is worth a lot to Hilton. | |
| May 19, 2016 at 20:06 | comment | added | Dean MacGregor | @Aron It's not fraud for a person with the authority to make a purchase to do so from a friend. It is a potential principle-agent problem if the employee is overpaying to benefit the friend but it could be that the friend is giving the employee a discount. Now where it would be fraud is if Dave draws up a fake itinerary and you never go anywhere but the two of you split what the employer paid for the fake trip. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 5:49 | comment | added | Aron | You are missing the fraud connection. If your mate Dave works at a travel agent, he could split the commission he got on the sale with you. | |
| May 18, 2016 at 4:55 | comment | added | Greenstone Walker | @Ketura, an employee getting rewards points on their personal card may be considered a benefit for taxation purposes, risking trouble with inland revenue. Alternatively, rewards points may be considered a gift, and some employees are forbidden to accept gifts (e.g. police, military, civil service). | |
| May 17, 2016 at 18:10 | comment | added | Bent | It will also assure the university (or employer) that it is a place you can buy tickets and not a credit card scam and that they will have someone reliable to help when the student/employee is stranded in The Kingdom of Far Far Away. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 16:39 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | Further to your second bullet, the institution might do some kind of diligence on its approved suppliers, in which case even if the alternative, cheaper, supplier is perfectly legitimate, there's still no record in the accounts office that it's legit and so you can't buy from it. At its worst this can be a bad situation where the institution is over-paying because it hasn't properly explored the market, whereas at its best it prevents the university buying from shady types that manage to offer a discount because they aren't even registered for tax. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 15:46 | comment | added | stannius | Credit card bonus points could entice the traveler to book a more expensive ticket than otherwise, costing the university a lot of money so the traveler can get a small bonus. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 15:13 | comment | added | DJClayworth | @Ketura Usually it means that the institution does get points, or something equivalent. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 15:09 | comment | added | RemcoGerlich | Also they may need to prove to funders that the amounts they spend on travel are reasonable. They do that by having a documented procedure, approved by the funder, that involves having a preferred travel agent that was chosen by some documented criteria, and then asking all employees to book through that agent. When they get questions about particular cases, they can show that the procedure was followed. Easily worth the odd $50 now and then. | |
| May 17, 2016 at 14:49 | comment | added | reirab | @Ketura I was about to ask the same question. How on Earth does that help the university at all? | |
| May 17, 2016 at 14:31 | comment | added | Ketura | "...which also makes sure that the flyer does not get credit card bonus points for the booking." This appears to be painted as a positive thing, though for who I cannot guess. Why would this be an advantage? | |
| May 17, 2016 at 14:21 | comment | added | rolinger | Another addition to the detailed list above, my employer uses a single supplier to have a single point of contact in emergency situations. If there is a crash or other travel incident it reduces their effort to track down if any employees on business trips are affected by having immediate access to all itinerary and ticket information | |
| May 17, 2016 at 11:35 | history | answered | DCTLib | CC BY-SA 3.0 |