Business travel is a necessary tool for the conduct of modern day business. In an
increasingly globalized economic scenario most companies realize that they cannot
remain insulated from the rest of the world and in order to grow and develop they
need to have a greater regional or even an international presence. This thought
process has necessitated the setting up of regional and global offices of a parent
company. While daily communications between the parent company and its regional
or global branches can be effectively managed via modern day technologies such as
video conferencing, relationship building which is often believed to be the foundation
of business success can only be achieved by face to face meetings especially when
the global offices of a company are located in foreign countries whose language,
customs and traditions differ from that of the home country.
The recent global economic meltdown affected the bottom line of companies all over
the world and resulted in the introduction of various cost cutting measures like
freezing of pay, forced unpaid vacations and the downgrading of business travel
trips from the premier cabins of carriers for at least short journeys which have
duration of less than four hours. Moreover companies have also tried to trim business
travel expenditure through better management of travel and more stringent reporting
of expenses. This has made the travel departments of most companies more aggressive
in their quest for finding cheap business class flights for their executives.
In fact these travel departments now have to do their utmost to ensure that their
executives continue to travel for business in the manner that they are accustomed
to and not be forced to downgrade their airline cabin choices especially when this
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