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Why does everyone equate last minute booking with the size of the seat? Do big people tend to book late?
Seriously, I'd like to book a big seat 30 days in advance to Europe. It costs 400 for a small seat. One would think a big seat would be around $600 (not $6000).
Also, there are companies that don't pay attention to travel expense, but many of them were riding on the high time of the internet boom. They are few and far between these days.
Many business travellers like to travel and see new cities. When the "hassle factor" gets to high, they will avoid the trips. Hassle-Factor is a function of: Lack of comfort, delays, TSA, rescheduling penalties, inflexible schedules (force round trips), lines at airports, smelly person sitting next to you. At some point, the businessperson who once created a good argument to go on a boondoggle (oh, I mean business trip
), now comes up with a convincing argument for staying home and doing a video-conference.
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Please go back and read what I said. Size has nothing to do with the price. Book last minute -- such as when your client says I want you here tomorrow -- and you're going to get shafted. In that situation, business/first class is not that much more expensive than coach. For example, to fly from IAD to SAN -- something I used to do quite a bit for work -- next Tuesday will cost me around $1,755 for a coach seat. Why? Because I'm booking last minute.
Now, for this particular flight, doing it in first means paying about $3,000, so I wouldn't do that. But sometimes, doing it in first means that I'll pay about $1,900 or so, so I just say, the hell with it, I'm going in first.
As for business travellers going on boondoggles, hah! Let me tell you something -- the convention center in SAN looks just like the one in MSY or DTW or ORD or MCO or SFO. And the office of a client in DFW looks just like the office of someone in AUS or DEN or LAX.
I also told people I'd never waste my time with videoconferencing. If it was important enough for me to need to see the person's face when I was talking to them, then I was going to do it in person. If it was important to go and see a client, then I was going to do it, period.
A lot of people think that business travel is all fun and glamour. The same people think that airline pilots get paid $300K to work one flight a month to CDG!