THE SAVVY BUSINESS TRAVELER

Professional road warrior Chris reveals his secrets for scoring great deals on the go

WHEN CHRIS MCGINNIS was a child in the 1960s, he and his family would fly to Ottawa, Canada, for summer vacations at his mother’s family lake house on Big Rideau Lake. They often took Eastern Airlines, which Chris knew as “the turquoise airline,” while Delta Air Lines was “the blue airline.”

He loved flying from the start.

“While my brother and sisters were frightened, pale, motion sick, and frequently putting ‘barf bags’ to good use, I was up and out of my seat, talking to passengers, checking out the different views from other windows, chatting up flight attendants, and scoring wings and decks of cards and occasional visits to the cockpit, something that is no longer allowed.”

Decades later, Chris, now fifty-two, has a different view of travel as a well-known correspondent and consultant. He’s been the business travel columnist for BBC and a travel correspondent on HLN, and now that he lives in San Francisco, he’s the editor of the Frequent Travel Advisor blog on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website.

He’s also the author of two books about business travel and appears frequently on TV, online, and in print offering tips and advice to those seeking the wisdom of the road warrior.

Chris started his career as a management consultant in the 1980s, at about the time when frequent flyer programs were ramping up. He designed a traveler training program for new employees at his company to help them deal with the rigors of the road.

“For most new employees, the extent of their frequent travel up to that point had been spring break to Florida or Mexico.”

Eventually he took that idea and formed Travel Skills Group and offered a similar program to Fortune 500 companies. That resulted in a lot of media attention, and led to a newspaper column about business travel.

“That’s how my writing career began. Eventually, due to my location in Atlanta [at that time], CNN began to call, and I parlayed that into gigs there as ‘CNN’s business travel expert’ and travel correspondent for HLN.”

Few people know more about business travel, so I asked Chris to share his expertise with me, and you, about the state of business travel today.

I wondered whether business travelers and their companies are more focused on saving money today, in the wake of the Great Recession, than they were years ago. But Chris believes they have always tried to find a happy medium between cost savings and traveler comfort.

“The focus is more about cost savings during lean times and traveler comfort in good times—and I’ve watched the tide turn three or four times since I’ve been covering the business travel beat since 1990.

“For example, the traveler who is worried that he or she might not have a job next year is likely to accept traveling in coach to Europe for an annual sales meeting. But a high-performing salesperson at a company reporting record profits who is flying to Europe to seal a multimillion-dollar deal or enter into a tough business negotiation is going to fly up front where he or she can get a good night’s rest and be ready to hit the ground running.”

Interestingly, Chris does not believe business travel is more difficult today than it was a generation or two ago.

“I know I’ll get a lot of disagreement on this one, but having watched business travel closely over the last twenty years, I’m confident to say that business travel has improved enormously, and this has a lot to do with the transparency brought on by the Internet.”

Chris says we have far more control over our trips than we used to—and control is all-important to the business traveler.

“Think of all the other advances we have now . . . Wi-Fi on planes; no smoking on planes; safer, newer hotels; big, bright airport terminals; seats that fold into flat beds for sleeping on overnight flights; modern trains from airport to city; a fast and easy rental car process. All of these were dreams of business travelers back in what many like to call ‘the golden age of travel,’ when everyone dressed up to fly. Hogwash!”

Chris has several key strategies he uses to save money on his travels. For one, when he’s visiting big cities that have good transit systems, he’ll avoid expensive downtown hotels by booking a hotel near a transit stop.

“These hotels usually have several reasonably priced restaurants in the vicinity, and most offer free Wi-Fi and a free breakfast. I also think that airline premium economy seats are a good value for your money—you typically have enough room to work on a laptop in premium economy, which makes it worth the extra cost.”

One of his new favorite tools for savings is Hotel Tonight, an app that lets you book last-minute deals in a city you’ve just landed in—or if, as happens frequently in business travel, you end up having to stay over an extra night.

“For research, I like meta-search sites like Kayak.com that provide me with what the going rate is on airfare or a hotel in a given city. Once I know that, I’ll go to the individual supplier site to make the booking.”

To find a good place to eat in an unfamiliar city, he likes Eater.com. (My preference for user-generated reviews of local eateries wherever I go is Yelp.com.) And for travel trends and industry information, he’s recently discovered Skift.com, which curates good business travel content.

“When I’m going to a new city for the first time, I like to buy (or download) the helpful (and gorgeously designed) DK Eyewitness Travel guides.” Visit TravelDK.com to see what Chris is talking about.

Chris and I disagree a little bit on credit cards that offer travel miles as rewards. I’d rather you get a card that rewards you with cash, which you can then use for travel or any way you want. Chris thinks they’re a nice way to build up points to redeem for free trips, “but since you typically only earn ‘bonus points’ they don’t help achieve the holy grail of business travel, which is elite status.”

On frequent flyer programs, Chris thinks it was a mistake for airlines to base the programs, and the perceived loyalty of their customers, on miles flown instead of dollars spent.

“Southwest, and more recently Delta, are the first major airlines to move in the direction of tying loyalty to dollars spent [so-called revenue-based programs], and I think other airlines will soon follow suit.”

I believe using loyalty programs can end up costing you more than you might otherwise pay, but Chris says, “Once you reach elite levels with airline or hotel programs, I think the benefits, especially for business travelers, make it worth choosing a supplier based on program instead of price.”

With hotels, Chris advises business travelers to always ask for a specific room when they check in.

“Get the person behind the desk involved in choosing a good room,” he said. “If you don’t, a computer will assign you a room that could be a dud. The person behind the desk knows which rooms are ‘good’ and which ones are not. Ask for something specific, like a room with a view, one away from elevators, or one away from the noise of the pool area—that way, they can’t leave the choice up to the reservations system.”

Chris doesn’t do as much traveling today as he used to.

“My family is very proud of the fact that I’ve been able to create a company and a lifelong career doing what I love and being my own boss. But they don’t like the fact that I’m away from home so much. And as I get older, I’m finding more joy on the home front, and only travel when I have to these days compared to before, when I was willing to jump on a plane anytime to anywhere for any reason.”

Having heard Chris’s story, what tips can you keep in mind to save money as a business traveler?

Get corporate-negotiated hotel rates as an individual.

• There’s a particular site that I really like called QuikBook.com for business travel. QuikBook began principally to offer small businesses and individuals access to corporate-type rates on hotel bookings. They’re a big player in a handful of markets, including Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
• They use a blind booking model with mystery rooms and you don’t find out which hotel you’re getting until after you pay nonrefundable money. But again, you can get a room at a price that’s a fraction of what it would sell for otherwise to the average business traveler.

Know the best use of your rewards miles or points.

• I’m not a big fan of credit cards that offer frequent flyer miles or points toward a hotel stay, because the airlines and hotels are always raising the bar of what it takes to redeem a ticket. But I know people love them and many have a lot of miles to use up.
• If that sounds like you, there are several free websites that will take a scalpel to your rewards account to tell you the best use of your miles or points for a particular airline or hotel. These include MileWise.com, GoMiles.com (recently acquired by Traxo.com), and AwardWallet.com.
• You give these sites access to your loyalty accounts and they alert you to deals, warn you if any miles are expiring, and make suggestions about the optimal use of miles or points at any given moment. It’s a great way to leverage the value in what you’ve got, though not every one of these sites works with every airline or hotel’s loyalty program.

Re-shop your car rental before your trip.

• It’s common that when somebody books an airline ticket, they also book their rental car. But rental car reservations are, as a general rule, fully changeable: You pay no money up front, just at the time you rent the car. So I routinely re-shop the rental car rate again a week before my trip—whether it’s for business or pleasure.
• For example, my family and I recently went to Denver for a ski trip. I originally booked the car for a week at $273. But when I re-shopped just before the trip with another company, I found a rate of $99 including junk fees. Wow! That was a lot of money back in my pocket.
• Anecdotally, I’d say I save money at least 90 percent of the time by using this method. I can’t say it works 100 percent of the time, because there are some times when it’s actually more expensive. In that case, I just stay with my original booking.
• Finally, I want to tell you about a website called AutoSlash.com that will automatically track your car rental rate each day before a trip and rebook you at a cheaper rate when they find something better. AutoSlash only works with a limited number of rental companies, but it’s still worth a look. (By the way, there’s a similar service for hotels called Tingo.com that will book your room for you and then continually re-shop your rate. If a better deal pops up on your same room, they’ll automatically rebook you at the new lower rate.)

Avoid add-on fees at the car rental counter.

• Be sure to investigate alternate ways you might be covered for temporary use of a rental car other than paying for add-on coverage.
• Car rental companies love to sell you what’s called “collision damage waiver” (CDW). When you’re at the rental counter, you will probably be warned about the consequences of not accepting the CDW, also known by the codes LDW (loss damage waiver) or PDW (physical damage waiver). But certain credit cards or even your auto insurer will provide this coverage in lieu of the expensive add-on CDW coverage.
• Personal effects coverage might also be offered at the rental counter. This covers you in the event something is stolen from your vehicle. Again, you can forget about it; your credit card might cover you.
• Know before you go, and a call to your credit card company and your auto insurer is all it takes.