I noticed your message. I realize it is a bit old, but I appreciate the positive notes and I would be happy to help with any concerns you might have. I to am a frequent business traveler and an employee of Egencia. Let me know if I can help. Best Regards,
Joel
jennis@expedia.com

Get a life everyone. Stick with an airline that takes care of you. It’s always been Delta for me. And I’ve tried AA at DFW, UA at ORD, and YX in MKE. I grew up in Dallas and started flying in 1980, and have lived near MKE for the last 12 years. Delta always has the better attitude. I’m so glad they bought NW…I can now get good connections west from MKE.

I used to fly ORD-LAX-SYD each month…that’s a lot of miles in F on UA. It got me great service over the Pacific…but didn’t earn me squat domestically or to Europe.

If that had been DL service, I would have been welcomed the next time I had flown to LHR or FCO.

We need to get used to the fact that flying ain’t what it used to be…no more piano bars on DC-10′s.

I’m certain it’s impossible to recreate the error I got. It was over a year ago, going from L.A. to Morocco with a stopover in D.C. on the way back, a total of 6 segments, all Delta coded but operated by 4 different airlines (thanks, Fly America!). Everything went smoothly except I wasn’t able to do the final booking. I didn’t stay to investigate, but just went over to delta.com and booked the same itinerary there (as Jakob Nielsen says, when users have a problem with your web site, they just leave). Sorry I can’t be more helpful.

I do find some features of Egencia very nice, for example it has a very good interface for searching alternative airports. Other features are less convenient, such as the restriction that if you narrow your search by time of day you’re limited to windows of exactly 4 hours. Overall it’s not significantly better or worse than other sites, just different in some of the details, so I use it some of the time.

One feature that is missing from this and every other site that would be useful for businesses dealing with the U.S. government is an indication of whether an itinerary is compatible with the Fly America Act. I realize this is difficult to implement and probably impossible to get right with 100% accuracy, because compliance with the Act is partly dependent on the availability of alternative flights and that’s something that’s very hard to search exhaustively. But some indication, and pointing out alternative compatible flights, would definitely be useful.

Ron, I hope this does not seem intrusive but I saw your comment and wanted to follow up directly. I work for Egencia and of course, we take feedback like yours seriously.

Specifically, your issue with the “error message” is one we have not heard before and I want to make sure we address immediately. Would you mind getting in touch with me directly so I can ask you a few questions? My email address is: pyoung@egencia.com

Regarding your question about the value of booking through a travel management company like Egencia, it definitely varies by the individual company goals and needs. Not knowing your company’s specific goals, many of our clients use Egencia for some of these reasons:

- To your point, many company’s like using Egencia because of the real-time reporting capabilities – getting “statistics and what not.” :) Especially during challenging economic times, reporting provides an additional level of insight. In this case, it’s real-time versus expense reports, which are submitted after travel. By having more than one source of data, companies can also make better business decisions.

- Many companies have preferred agreements with certain airlines, hotels or car companies that they will book a certain amount of travel and as a result, receive certain discounts or amenities such as free wireless or breakfast. By booking your travel through one source, corporations can make sure they meet these agreements, achieve thresholds and receive those discounts/amenities.

- Last reason is that when travelers are booking through different sources, it can be difficult to find them during an emergency. Should a severe weather event or even larger issue occur, Egencia pulls immediate reports for our clients to determine if their travelers have been affected. If you’ve booked through another source, you may be difficult to track down…your family or boss may know where you are but perhaps, it’s the middle of the night on a Sunday. By working through a single service such as Egencia, we can actually find you and get you home safely at any hour, any day of the week.

Alright, I’ll get off my soapbox now. :) Apologies for the lengthy response. Ron, please feel free to reach out to me directly. I’m happy to answer any other questions you may have.

often the expense of having an in-house agency to handle the contracts can be quite large as well.

Yes, I was wondering about that as well. We have an account with Egencia, and the travel department suggests that they would prefer it if all travel were booked through it so they could get statistics and what not. I’m not sure why they need this rather than monitoring the expense reports. From my perspective, Egencia has some nice features but also some problems, most crucially that sometimes it just doesn’t work (an error message on the final or pre-final screen). So I use it some of the time. I guess it’s a nice service to offer to your employees, and in theory it could make them spend less time planning travel on the company’s dime (that is, if the service were reliable). But I’m not sure what advantage we get from having a department analyzing everybody’s travel, when employees pretty much regulate themselves and are anyway accountable to their supervisors and budget holders rather than the travel folks.

Incidentally, while Expedia recently dropped the $7 booking fee, Egencia has kept it. Just another little expense of doing things the corporate way.

Perhaps I’d have a different outlook if we were allowed to fly other than in coach. Anyway, I’d be curious to learn what these fat corporate contracts are.

I haven’t been in the game directly for awhile, but sometimes the contracts are great deals and other times they aren’t. Speaking from my past knowledge, these contracts often aren’t set rates but rather percentages off of existing fares. The lowest fares may not be eligible for any discount but the higher you go, the bigger the discount. There are also thresholds built in for market share. So for example, United could require a corporate contract give the airline 80% of the share on JFK-LAX as part of the deal to get the best percent discount.

Personally, I’ve found cheaper deals on my own, and often the expense of having an in-house agency to handle the contracts can be quite large as well.

Perhaps I’d have a different outlook if we were allowed to fly other than in coach. Anyway, I’d be curious to learn what these fat corporate contracts are.

As far as the criticism for the 737’s they were flying — they were (are) terrific new planes (737-700’s I beleieve) fully equipped with the video-on-demand and Dish TV at every seat.

It’s not even worth correcting, but they were 737-800s. They only have a couple 737-700s. I agree that the 737s are perfectly fine and it’s all about how they’re configured inside.

Dick wrote:

Very interesting that you did not mention Virgin America in these markets. They have a far superior product – seat comfort, food, inflight entertainment, a staff that makes passengers feel welcome. Oh did I mention WiFi on every flight? I know where I am spending my travel dollars!

I didn’t mention Virgin America, because I don’t think this has anything to do with them. Virgin America has made progress in growing their corporate accounts, but the biggest business is with American and United and that’s who I think they’re gunning for.