[Anonymous]

[Cedric_Statherby]

As it is Friday I would like to open a discussion on a topic that I suspect all business travellers have experienced from time to time – the difference between spending one’s company’s money and one’s own.

I suspect we have all experienced hotels, meals, travel etc that we have no qualms about if our employer is paying, but which we would never contemplate using our own money for. I call this Schizophrenic Spending Syndrome (SSS).

The most dramatic example of SSS I have ever had was a visit to Paris with my wife as a client of a major bank (this was over 20 years ago when banks had huge expense accounts). Dinner was superb and the hotel they put me up in was the King George V. Where we had a suite, which even in the 1980s cost over £600 a night.

The next night we were on our own resources and the slightly more modest B&B we stayed in was about £15 a night!

I think a factor of 40 times between the two consecutive nights’ accommodation costs is the essence of SSS. But can others beat it?

[GivingupBA]

P.J.O’Rourke wrote humourously about wildly different attitudes to [and levels of] spending money, something like depending whether we were:

*spending our own hard-earned money on ourselves.
*spending our own hard-earned money on our family.
*spending someone else’s money on our family.
*spending someone else’s money on ourselves.

Cynical, maybe, but surely has a grain of truth in it.

Cedric, 600 quid versus 15, I can’t possibly beat that, but I’m envious of a King George V suite on expenses!

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

A few years back in stayed in Athens in a youth hostel for a couple of nights that I had visited before – cost was about £5-10 or so (think I got my own room). Then on a hosted trip with Emirates and Leading Hotels of the World – so Business Class to Dubai and the next night at the One & Only in Dubai Residence & Spa – which retails a lot more per night (think about £400 on average back then). Bit of a contrast. Turned up with my rucksack I’ve had since inter-railing when I was 18 (and still serves me well to this day!). Slightly different as not paid for by the company I was working at (Amex).

[MartynSinclair]

Most extreme spending for me was a couple of years ago…

Northolt to Europe to Santa Monica in a Gulfstream with client and dogs. Cost in in xs of Euros 100,000.

On arrival I’m Santa Monica.. a yellow taxi to LAX ($30) and a VS flight back to London on Virgin airmiles….(£300 in charges)…

[FDOS_UK]

As the owner of a micro business, providing professional services, I tend to spend my clients’ money as if it were my own and I know they appreciate this (my longest standing client is now in year 13 of the business relationship). I’d look for a 2-4* hotel, in a decent location, at reasonable rates and be sensible in other ways – e.g. next week, I’m flying to Nice and then driving to Marseille, as it is about half the cost of flying direct – it’s a pretty decent drive and I have plenty of time for the journey, too, so no great hardship.

When I’m in the middle east and the client is arranging things, I do appreciate the 5* palaces (Address, Jumeirah etc) and the lavish £30 buffet breakfasts and lunches – normally can’t fit dinner in!

[Coldbat]

While the cost of this is was only the Dutch exit taxes ( I agreed to pay them) for the company due to their Delta partnership, I was asked the best way of obtaining a client notarized/secure signature:

Client was in AMS, I in Minneapolis. I took the 9:00PM flight out on a Monday and was back in the office around 6:30 PM Tuesday. In country for a little over 2 hours, enough to meet the client at their solicitors and for me to have a few Heineken’s.

Overnight-ting the doc would have sufficed, but the attention to detail has paid off in the clients eyes ever since.

[MrMichael]

Most of my clients are public sector and I am very aware of it being crucial that I offer value for money, and that I spend in a way that would not outrage the taxpayer of any country I have to work in (Freedom Of Information and all that). Causing embarrassment to a client, would be a previous client very quickly. This is especially critical in the UK where the tabloid press like nothing better than reporting public servants staying in 5 star hotels with champagne, caviar, 1st class travel and call girls. If I have those things, I pay for them myself.

Edited to add: The last one MrsM will not allow 🙂

[LuganoPirate]

Nice thread Cedric,

My biggest spend some 10 years ago was for a client where we all met in Dubai. I had to book the Burj al Arab, three suites at $10,000 per night each (I see it was more expensive then than now) excluding breakfast!!! Total stay was just shy of $100,000 with helicopter transfers, food etc but wow, what an experience.

From there I had to fly to back to Europe and stayed in a gasthof (on my own expense) in germany for EUR 45 a night with breakfast. It was a bit of a comedown though.

[AnthonyDunn]

Never had the contrasting experience of Cedric’s or LP’s. Whilst never attaining the dizzying heights, I have learned that there are most definitely levels beneath which I absolutely will not descend. This rules out anything that remotely resembles a driver’s overnight chain such as Formule 1 in France where the stench of someone else’s socks is ubiquitous and enough to have you heading straight out from whence you came.

[DavidSmith2]

A very similar situation happens depending on whether people are on flat ‘per diems’ or ‘actuals’.

If you give someone per diems, they will usually eat at the local pizza/pasta with a bottle of house wine. The problem then of course is that HMRC will try and tax you on the money you save.

But if you give someone actuals (against receipts) they will have chateaubriand and a bottle or decent Bordeaux.

Given the choice, I always put staff on per diems to avoid the paperwork, and because it usually ends up cheaper, but the taxman is making it difficult to operate that way.

[TheRealBabushka]

Not withstanding company policies around expense account the key point is ethics. Sure the policy may allow you to splurge but is it ethical to do so?

If the culture of ethics is ingrained, it makes you wonder if corporate governance failures, sub-prime lending, MP expenses and other financial scandals would have occurred.

Is there a fundamental problem in the way society selects leaders in industry and public life by measuring and rewarding success on metrics that do not include ethical behaviour?

[LuganoPirate]

In the end I think we are all human, even MP’s (believe it or not) and if someone is offering something we could not usually have or even afford, there are not many of us who would turn it down.

I won’t mention the countries, but,
Being picked up with an army helicopter
Taken on a private jet belonging to a ministry of defense
Being part of a party receiving a new submarine and going out on it
Being admitted in the royal terminal of a Middle Eastern country before flying with a Prince of that country
Burj al Arab as above and a few more

These are things I could neither arrange or perhaps afford, so if i get the chance to be treated like this and I can, I’m not going to turn it down.

[MartynSinclair]

A very appropriate thread for where I am tonight..

I am staying at the wonderful Althoff Grandhotel Schloss Bensberg and am being entertained tonight.

This fabulous (and expensive) hotel has 3 restaurants. Two pretty normal ones (Italian and Spanish) and the 3 Michelin star, Vendome.

So it was the choice of myself and colleague to chose the most suitable.

My colleague wanted to try Vendome, which with wine would cost Euros 400 per person I thought the Italian would be more appropriate (which would cost around Euros 100 per person.

Our host wouldn’t have minded either and tables for 4 were available at both.

The decision was the Italian. I would really love to hear from some one who has eaten at a 3 Michelin star restaurant and describe whether the cost is worth the experience.

[LuganoPirate]

Change the booking Martyn to the Vendome.
Yes, the extra is well worth it for the experience.

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