Most Popular Reads of 2009

This blog’s most popular posts involved innovation, fighting words, myths and data sources.  Not quite sure what this topical variety tells me about the direction I should take with this travel management blog in 2010, but stay tuned! (Sign up here for immediate delivery of new articles via e-mail)

The most-read posts in 2009:

Three Myths About Sourcing Airlines – Part 3

(This wraps up the 3-part series.  See Part 1 on consortia buying here, and Part 2 on pre-paying here)

Forget About Those Frequent Flier Miles

Frequent flier miles add cost to the airfares your firm buys.  And yes, firms have tried to cut those costs by stripping miles out of corporate fares, or by capturing employee-earned miles.

But it doesn’t work, for two reasons:

1. Entitlement

No question, business travelers feel that those miles are theirs. 

Three Myths About Sourcing Airlines – Part 1

Given that air travel is typically a large spend item for most companies, it makes sense for procurement folks to attack it with extra energy and creativity.  Here are three ideas that often come up:

1. Consolidate air spend across a few firms to get better negotiating leverage
2. Buy air travel in bulk
3. Leverage frequent flier miles by stripping them out of the fare price, or by pooling them for corporate use.

Unless you’re the type that likes to take long walks in the hot sun, you can forget about using any of these methods – they just don’t work.  Here’s why: