Corporate Travel
Sam Smith Corporate Travel Services provides cost effective and professional corporate travel management solutions in the South West and throughout the UK. From our website, you can access most low cost budget airlines, airline check-in pages, rail information and pages about visas, airports and countries you may need to visit. Please take a moment to look at our helpful business travel articles.
Booking Travel
Generally, the easiest means of communication is by email. You can telephone though an email means less opportunities to make mistakes and of course, if one is on another call, saves talking to an answerphone.
The main information needed is where you wish to go, when (date) one wishes to go, when one wants to return and an indication of the time you want to arrive and depart. Unless it is clear (eg the information is on your email and the travel is for you!), names of the people travelling should be given. A name, in airline speak, is given as LASTNAME/ FIRSTNAME TITLE eg: Smith/Alexander Mr. Names must be accurate, so check the spelling carefully and MUST be the same as appear on the passport of the person travelling. Watch out for familiar names such as Bill (William) or Ted (Edward) and do not assume that a persons name is the name you know them by. Be especially careful with foreign names.
When stating the intended destination, always write the name of the destination in full UNLESS you are 110% sure that the three letter abbreviation is correct. Frankfurt/ Main is FRA *NOT* FFM (FFM is Fergus Falls, Minnesota). Birmingham in the UK is BHX, BHM is Birmingham, Alabama and BIR is a small airport in Nepal. So, always write the destination in full and if necessary, state the country or state as well. Usually we will query anything that looks strange - Do you mean Santiago in Chile or in Spain? Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon?
Once an email (or call) is received, an itinerary that gets as close to the request will be set up. You do not need to send copies of what you may have pulled off a booking site; you can do if you wish - it gives an indication of what you are after, but it is not essential.
- Availability of near to request flights at significant lower cost and/ or
Considerations:
It is not expected that people should have to travel from, say, Amsterdam to Frankfurt via and overnight stop in Paris to save £20 on a £100 fare. An alternative will be provided where the cost saving is siginificant in relation to the fare and where an indirect route is viable and sensible. For example, Dusseldorf to Nice may cost in the region of £800 whereas travelling via Zurich on the same route costs £180 and the timings are similar (save for an hours' stop) and would be considered significant. At the end of the day, the person travelling will need to decide.
Within a potential itinerary, sent for approval, various factors will be considered:
- Possible use of and offer of low cost carriers, even where this involves a direct web based booking
- Availability of indirect flights at siginificantly lower costs.
- Use, where possible, CAT35 fares (these are discounted "special" fares offered to selected agents. As members of the Advantage Business Travel Focus group, we have access to these fares.)
- Travel policy considerations. This boils down to "Is what you have to pay, sensible?". If what has been requested is deemed to fall outside what may be reasonably expected, clearance from the budget holder will be required.
Travel Policy can be emotive. That said, most people understand this concept. If a person, say, requests a direct flight where there is a significantly cheaper indirect flight, or an appropriate low cost flight, then the request would requre further approval. In an extreme case, direct reference would be made by us to the budget holder.
- Flexibility. Most fares will allow for changes at a fee. We will only use full fare tickets where no reasonable "pay to change" fare is available. The traveller should consider very carefully, however, how much flexibility they really need.
Flexibility is always an issue. Attention to meeting planning does make a big difference. We will look at the cost to change and the need to pay a fare upgrade. A cheap fare which is very low down the fare chain will invariably need, possibly, a substantial upgrade fee. Such a fare may only be appropriate if there is only a remote possibility of a need to change. It should be noted that in some cases we may use a very cheap fare and then just buy a new one, if a change is required. These will be considered on a one for one basis.
- Cabin class will be considered on merits and may be referred. There is no presumption against any particular cabin, as some business cabin fares can be cheaper then economy cabin fares (especially on long haul)
Hotels:
- Hotels will be booked on the basis of best value, within the budget laid down for room nights. Unless otherwise advised, we look for good "3 star plus" hotels. These combine good rates along with acceptable standards of comfort and amenity. If a hotel is known to you, then please let us know and we will try to obtain a booking on your behalf.
Any information you can offer with regard to location - where you wish to stay, helps. We can search for hotels as simply as "near the airport" or "downtown" . We have, through our Amadeus GDS (global distribution system), the ability to search by postcode or area. And, of course, Google Earth. The more information you can give, the better.
You should bear in mind that any hotel featured on a GDS is one which, in turn, warrants being on a global system - it will have enough rooms and not be a hotel dedicated to, say, a tour operator. This means that any GDS featured hotel will be seldom less than 3 stars. If you do know of "a little place" then let us know.
- Hotels are reserved using a credit card. This guarantees the hotel room to you and may be cancelled, generally, up to 16:00 hrs local time of the day of arrival. This deadline can change! You then pay the bill upon your departure - on your own credit card. We do not pre-pay hotel rooms. If you are not going to make use of a booked hotel, then you must call us as soon as possible. If, for any reason, you cannot contact us, then call the hotel directly to advise them of the cancellation. Always get a name or better, a cancellation reference. If you do not do this, the general penalty is one nights stay (after all, they kept the room aside for you).
Cars:
- Rental cars are booked with all the major car rental companies. These are not pre-paid bookings. The car booked will take into consideration you particular needs such as number of persons, distance to be travelled, requirement for SatNav, etc. We do not favour any particular car rental company.
You must take care when collecting you car. Do not just sign everything handed to you without giving due consideration to insurances and other extras. Some sales operatives are quite adept at getting you to agree to charges which may not be relevant to your needs.
Cars should always be returned with a full tank of petrol and preferably returned to an individual with the car rental company rather than just "left". This avoids many later disputes, especially those relating to any alleged damage to the vehicle.
By booking cars this way, you can always change, ammend or even cancel your requirement at any time. You will be assured that a car of a certain type has been booked for you, but you will be at liberty to ammend the car type if needs be (eg the vehicle is not big enough due to extra passengers)
Rail:
- Any requirement for rail travel must be with us at least two working days before departure from the UK. We obtain most of our continental rail travel tickets from Rail Europe in London where we have an account. For short rail journeys, we recommend that you simply by the ticket at the local point of departure station. Costs are not usually great. If you require quotes for rail travel, please specifiy if you wish to have second or first class travel (or quotes for both!) at time of ordering.
- Sam Smith Travel do hold a domestic (UK) rail licence and can issue tickets on the British railways network. We suggest that you only ask for domestic UK rail tickets where the cost of tickets is likely to be substantive. Remember to allow at least two working days notice.
A short guide to booking travel arrangements with us.
