Late October I will be traveling to UK for training. This is a step for my new freelance consulting/training career. The training organization sent me a letter last week saying that if I needed accomodation at the training center, they have a special rate of 90 British Pounds. Being the frugal soul that I am, I decided to check the same hotel at Expedia.
Lo and behold, I booked the same room at 85 USD. Now, the current exchange rate between GBP and USD is 1.4542 in Turkey. There is a savings of roughly 45 USD per night!
I used to work at a very large multinational company and they encouraged us to use the corporate rate codes even for personal travel and believe it or not some people actually used them! The travel/purchasing departments do work out real good deals with hotels, car rental agencies but they usually get a rebate at the end of a quarter or a year because they are profit centers! So, using corporate rates benefit only a small part of the company. Yes, of course there is still contribution to the bottom line but all profit centers are evaluated separately. A smart manager would choose to keep her costs down and not use corporate rates.
I love Expedia. I have always been satisfied with their prices and service whenever I needed to change my itinerary or cancel reservations. Their policies are very clear, there are no hidden costs or traps. What other online sources do you use?
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