travelthunder.com

In today’s business environment, we need to make more money, but it’s just as important to find legitimate ways to spend it wisely. Nowhere is this more relevant than in travel, since airfares and hotel costs have been volatile over the past five years.
The tragedies of September 11 placed a short-term dampener on airfares. However, indirect costs to travelers have included restructuring of airlines by dramatically reducing capacity and decreasing availability of flights, the laying off of staff with a corresponding drop in customer service and morale, and attempts to tighten security with significant inconveniences. The travel experience has been made more arduous not only by airfares creeping up, but also by increases in penalties associated with nonrefundable tickets, by costly new rules for excess baggage, and by cutbacks in meal service. An emerging variable to factor in to the travel planning process is an inversion of the old paradigm, whereby the typical leisure traveler purchased travel far in advance, while the business traveler sought airline tickets and hotel accommodation at the last minute. Specifically, we are now seeing an increase in the leisure travelers planning trips at the last minute and business travelers purchasing tickets in advance. This adds another layer of complexity to how travel suppliers will price their product.
Similarly, as hotel occupancy rates have edged up toward prior highs, hotel rates have moved in tandem. All of these changes challenge the patience and resilience of world travelers and road warriors alike. that travel has become, confident that you know how to get the best service for your travel dollar.
According to American Express Travel Service’s annual surveys of their business clients, travel and entertainment have been the second-largest controllable business expense after salaries. The Professional Sales Association indicates that entrepreneurs and sales professionals spend an average of fifty-seven nights away from home each year. Even Internet-focused companies acknowledge that truly understanding a client or closing a sale requires face-to-face communication.
So how can we help you survive the challenges of travel post– September 11? Through trial and error—and sometimes paying too much—we have learned how to travel in luxury for (much, much) less. We have invested decades researching, analyzing, and testing all the intricate rules and regulations, all the Web sites, all the books on the topic of travel savings. Obviously, we have spent huge amounts of time and money gathering this valuable information, all in one place, and refining it for ease of understanding. Before today, it has never been presented in one book geared exclusively to sophisticated world travelers and road warriors fed up with paying rising prices for air, hotels, and car rentals—all while being pressured to downgrade.

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