Business Travel - How to Get More With Less

 














I am lucky to travel for business which helps facilitate my pleasure travel, so when I come across something that helps both go a bit more smoothly, I am all about sharing.  

Today's gem comes from the Road Warriorette, who writes a blog full of interesting and useful business (mostly) travel advice. Check out her blog here and read on.

Peace, love, and travel!
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Dealing with the business travel “squeeze”
June 25, 2015

Squeeze.  It’s a common theme in business travel.  Ever since the economy tanked in 2008 I’ve really seen an uptick in businesses trying to squeeze as much as they can out of everything they can possibly think of. Air carriers are moving seats as close as they possibly can get together to add more rows to planes. Planes constantly need to be worked on which I can only guess is because the airlines are pushing them to their limits (for example, Duct tape story 1 & Duct tape story 2) .  Loyalty programs are becoming less generous so that more points can get squeezed out of your account. Despite record profits and lower oil costs airfares are going up in price which is squeezing money out of your pockets. Hotels are guilty of the squeeze too by doing things like charging ridiculous rates for Wi-Fi (just look at what Marriott got caught doing) and making reward stays more expensive. Even companies that business travelers work for are squeezing more by micromanaging expenses. To help with all this, here my tips for dealing with the squeeze.

Change airlines. I haven’t made the switch yet to Delta, but I’m really considering it. After a pretty bad streak of delays due to maintenance (not to mention some really awful customer service) with American and Southwest I went looking for answers. I researched the Air Travel Consumer Report released by the DOT and I noticed that overall Delta is consistently performing better than American and Southwest in on time performance, as well as delays caused by the carrier (which includes maintenance delays). These results are giving me incentive to making a change. My loyalty only goes so far.
Don’t hoard miles. Over the years of traveling I built up a decent amount of airline miles through different airlines. I used to.......<<read the full article here>>