NEW YORK, N.Y. -- According to Fare Buzz, business travel is considered to be an essential tool of commerce in both large and small companies. In fact small companies seem to have a greater reliance on business travel as they often lack the visibility of large companies. Moreover small companies have to compete with large companies in order to acquire new customers as a result of which they have to often invest substantially in business travel for face-to-face client and sales generating meetings. It is estimated that in large firms business travel costs make up three to five percent of sales but in smaller companies this business travel component tends to be much higher.

A recent study conducted by the economic forecasting agency, Oxford Economics states that there is a definite link between business travel and corporate profitability. It goes on to add that every dollar spent on travel by a US company can generate an average of $3.80 in profit and a $12.50 in revenue. However, due to the current ongoing economic downturn, several companies across the board have cut back or drastically reduced their business travel spends in recent months. The study concludes that this should be considered as 'a penny wise and pound foolish approach' as the bottom line benefits that accrue from business travel are in fact achieved by most businesses over a long time horizon.

Rather than cutting back or eliminating business travel totally, companies should look to reduce and effectively manage their business travel costs in order to continue to avail of the advantages of business travel in a challenging economic climate. Travel expenses can be managed more efficiently if a company takes these simple actions toward organizing its travel activity and curbing its business travel spending.

Essential business travel trips:

Companies who have a regional or global footprint tend to rely quite extensively on business travel, however if business travel costs need to be reduced, then such companies should try to limit their business travel to essential trips that only involve face-to-face client meetings and to those trips which are exclusively sales related or meant solely for incentive purposes.

Partnering with a travel agency:

If you are looking to reduce business travel costs for your company and do not have a partnership with a business travel agency now is the time to get one. A professional travel agency like the New York City based travel agency, Fare Buzz can help you outline your travel goals and build and enforce a business travel policy that fits your budget and business goals.

Negotiating with suppliers:

After you have outlined your goals and set down the rules for employee travel, you can then attempt to renegotiate rates with your regular suppliers like airlines or hotels or even shop around for new lower cost suppliers. However if you attempt to do this on your own you might not be as successful as you would be if you allowed your partner agency, Fare Buzz to negotiate on your behalf. Fare Buzz has exclusive contracts with more than sixty domestic and international airlines and can thus effectively negotiate to acquire cheap business class air fares.

Free travel on award tickets:

Fare Buzz is the country's leading supplier of cheap business class tickets. Fare Buzz through its special relationship with a whole host of airlines manages to procure wholesale cheap business class flights which it then offered for sale to its clients. These cheap business class airline tickets come loaded with all the perks of full priced tickets like mileage accrual. Miles so earned can then be used to procure free future business class travel and further savings. In fact Fare Buzz also operates its own rewards program in conjunction with American Express rewards cards and every flight, hotel, vacation package and car rental booking that you book through Fare Buzz earns you points which can be redeemed at more than 200 of the nation's retail and travel outlets.

Monitoring reports to track business travel spending:

The experienced and knowledgeable team at Fare Buzz can help you monitor your business travel expenditure by providing you with reports that illustrate all your business travel expenditure along with details like names of staff who are booking trips.

So if you are looking for innovative ways to reduce your company's business travel spends or looking for options to effectively manage your annual travel budget, do get in touch with the New York City based travel agency at www.farebuzz.com or call 1-800-847-1963 today.

2009 has been an extremely challenging for the entire travel industry as the recession has compelled most businesses and companies to rethink their travel procurement strategies. This has resulted in a sharp slowdown in business travel which has always been a money spinner for major airlines and hotel chains. The Federal Aviation Administration earlier this year predicted that overall domestic air passenger traffic was set to fall nearly 9% during 2009, while international bookings were expected to decline by 2.4% as companies were forced to make deep business travel cuts to grapple with the effects of the global recession.

Business travel which accounts for most first-class and business class ticket sales has suffered greatly from the huge cuts that companies have been compelled to make as they have tried to limit their employees travel or move this travel to the coach cabins for at least short haul journeys. Most companies however believe that business travel is a key element to their success as face to face meetings with suppliers and customers cannot be eliminated no matter how tough the economic conditions for business are. The personal touch is an essential tool of business which just cannot be replicated by advances in telecommunications and video conferencing technologies though a recent UBS survey of 61 influential travel buyers stated that average air spend this year, has declined more than 30 percent which has dealt a devastating blow to the business travel industry. Business travel is the icing on the cake for all major airlines, which have been affected the most by the cuts in travel budgets. If in 2008 the airlines were battling rising fuel costs, in 2009 they have to face the travel demand crisis which has even affected low cost carriers like Southwest which has seen a drop in business travel demand by nearly 25 to 30 percent for certain sectors.

The airlines have tried to aggressively combat travel demand crisis by slashing fares in order to sustain current load factors. These lower fares have extended even to international ticket sales as airlines like British Airways offered previously un-heard of deals for its business class cabin on its lucrative transatlantic route in the spring of 2009. This tactic was quickly copied by a whole host of airlines during the months of April and May which were particularly tough for the airlines.

This trend continued all throughout the summer as airlines tried to sustain their loads and avoid cutting capacity, for fares are far easier to manage when the upturn which typically follows a downturn begins. The US economy has in fact already begun to show signs of recovery as the Federal Reserve in recent days has cautiously averred that economic activity has stabilized and ‘firmed’ in almost all regions of the economy. This has also been reflected in the US stock market which has risen by almost 30% from the levels of historic lows which were experienced in the month of March 2009.

All this augurs well for the business travel industry which has begun to see a slight improvement during September 2009. In fact in a recent Topaz International survey of 260 travel buyers, a small number of buyers even displayed cautious optimism as they stated that they expected business travel spend for the rest of the year to in fact increase as the economy begins to turn.

In anticipation of this upturn, the British legacy carrier, British Airways which recently announced another fare sale across all its cabins for various routes, is all set to launch a new all-business transatlantic service on September 29th 2009 which will connect New York City’s JFK airport with London’s City Airport. This premium service which is aimed at time-pressed business travelers who have to travel frequently between the world’s most prominent finance capitals will initially launch as a daily return service which will increase to a twice daily flight from mid-October 2009. The launch of this new service at such a time indicates that the business travel industry is poised for a take- off yet again.

Most senior managers intuitively understand that employees have to be kept on the road even during an economic downturn as business travel is critical to their success for when business picks up once again they will have a vital edge over competition. If you believe in this school of thought and are looking at ways to cleverly minimize your travel spend, you should consider partnering with the New York City based travel company, Fare Buzz.

Fare Buzz is one of the nation’s leading suppliers of business class travel. The company has an exclusive relationship with over sixty domestic and international airlines and is able to procure cheap business class tickets for almost all worldwide destinations. Booking business class travel through Fare Buzz provides savings of over 70% as compared to tickets booked through regular channels. Moreover these Cheap Business Class Airline Tickets come with all the perks of a full priced ticket like mileage accrual and pre-assigned seats.

To effectively manage your travel spend and reduce airline, hotel and car rental costs, you need to align with a highly efficient and cost effective procurement agency like Fare Buzz which is equipped with a trained and knowledgeable staff who are on hand seven days a week to ensure that you get the very best travel deals to meet all your company’s goals of maximizing and effectively using the travel budget. Do call Fare Buzz at 1-888-808-4123 to speak to an agent today.

Many companies rely heavily on travel in order to conduct business. There may be sales people who need to travel to present some product or service. There may also be employee training that can not be conducted in house so these employees need to travel to some location for their training. Whatever the case may be, companies find themselves in need of airfare, hotels and car rentals.

Most companies utilize inhouse employees to manage the companies travel needs or the employee who will be traveling prepares their travel need themselves. If your company does a significant amount of travel and manages their travel needs in this manner your company could be over spending on travel.

Most travelers are savvy in terms of travel may not be savvy enough to get the best pricing on travel services. Working with a firm like Fare Buzz allows companies to have someone they can rely on the help get travel at prices much lower than purchasing travel themselves. Since Fare Buzz books a significant amount of travel we are able to get prices that companies may not be able to get since the company is most likely going to pay retail prices for their travel needs.

Outsourcing your Corporate Travel Management will not only generate a cost savings but it would allow companies to have a resource to work directly with airlines to get those employees who seek travel that seat on the plane at the time they need or that suite in their favorite hotel.