[Anonymous]

[BusinessTraveller]

Did anyone watch the Dispatches programme last night on the “Olympic tickets scandal”?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od

Did you apply for tickets and if so were you successful? If not, are you considering buying a corporate hospitality package? How much would you or your company be willing to spend on seeing the 100m final?

We will be running a feature in the April edition of the magazine so any insight would be useful.

[RichHI1]

Got my tickets to fly as far away as possible (see prior thread).

[BeckyBoop]

Tom, Got a better idea. Why not do a piece on company travel policys and those who DONT offer business/premium class travel for there employees. Exposing the risk of health and safety etc!

http://www.businesstraveller.com/discussion/topic/Why-Business-or-First-class

Kind Regards xx

[stevescoots]

I will see you there Rich!

[RichHI1]

Becky I think allied to that is the reasons behind business policy?

Before starting my own business i have seen the following in action:

Minimized Cost – cheapest restrictive coach fares always advance purchase. Often causes lower seat miles per currency unit but increases miles flown as restrictive tickets are junked and rebooked.

Maximized value for money – using classes of accomodation and airlines to ensure employees are in fit state to deliver value to the company without incurring unnecessary cost. Often the use of Corporate JEts or leased jets is a difficult one here as too often above the line cost is examined and below the line cost is ignored.

COrporate Deals – I have observed finance people empowered to negotiate airline deals without understanding the business dynamic and without having the negotitaing skills necessary. They are seen as being the right people to control cost but they are not given the tools to do it. As a result companies are straitjacketed into using airlines where on many routes other carriers offeer significantly better value. Thought eh board can be shown key figures for cherry picked routes to hide the true story.

Corporate Ego Polishing – Making senior executives feel important by allowing them flight privileges such as First Class, free tickets for the wife, girlfriend or secretary, private jets etc. Designed to make Senior executives feel important and make junior executives aspire.

Questionable stockholder value.

Local options – here there is a global policy but local boards insist that tehir flag carrier can be included for their country so they get their miles to take for vacation.

Call me a cynic but I find most policies do not work as organizations get larger and more and more people who do not fly are involved.
A long time ago a friend in a corporate HR deparment gave me a great insight. She defined “Corporate Policy as that which cannot be justified by common sense”.

[JordanD]

Tom – there was an awful lot of rubbish on last night’s ticket programme, with very little new information. There’s a collective of us online who have been helping out others by pointing them in the direction of the European Authorised Ticket Resellers: these are appointed agencies by LOCOG/the respective European National Olympic Bodies to sell tickets to each respective nation. Under EU rules, these tickets are able to be bought by any individual within the EU from any nation.

I myself have supplemented the tickets I got in the LOCOG Ballot by buying from across some of these European ATRs, as have many others successfully.

[LuganoPirate]

I’m also staying well away from London in this period. If I really want to watch the mens 100m final, which by the way I don’t, then there is always the TV.

Quite frankly to spend over an hour to travel in each direction, go through all sorts of security most likely for an event that will last about 10 seconds top, is a complete and utter waste of time.

By the way, tickets for these events were for sale in sports shops in Switzerland and Germany. Hearing I’m English, the salespeople tried to push them onto me selling me as many as I wanted in an effort to get rid of them.

I declined and it seems most of our European brothers and sisters are also giving London a wide berth in this period preferring to hold house parties and BBQ’s with friends while watching their athletes perform!

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