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More business travelers told to get ‘lowest logical fare’

August 02, 2010 |

Nearly 75% of North American companies have revised their travel policies in the last two years to cut costs, and two-thirds of those now are discouraging - and in some cases, forbidding - employees from flying in first- or business-class seats.

Those results of a new survey of corporate travel managers due out Monday show companies increasingly are pushing workers to buy non-refundable fares or at least get what's called the "lowest logical fare." Typically, that's the lowest-priced fare that doesn't cause travelers to take wildly circuitous routes, cause them to miss important engagements, incur an extra night in a hotel or lose productivity.

Still, North American companies, which spent an estimated $48.7 billion on airline tickets in 2009, could save almost $30 billion combined annually if they instituted and enforced stricter travel policies that required non-refundable tickets or the lowest logical fare. That's according to the survey's publishers, Egencia and the National Business Travel Association Foundation.

Despite revised travel policies, Christophe Peymirat, vice president of global marketing at Egencia, the corporate travel arm of online travel site Expedia, says pushing corporate travelers to use non-refundable fares is "far from commonplace."

Get the full story at USA TODAY

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