Business Travel Tips

Lufthansa is offering discount airfare on flights between Chicago and a number of major European destinations.

Fares start as low as $206 each way, exclusive of taxes and fees.
Tickets must be purchased by March 1.
Travel period: from now through May 1.

Below a sampling of Lufthansa’s discount airfare on flights from Chicago O’Hare to Europe.
Please note, the fares are one-way, based on a round-trip purchase and do not include taxes and fees.
- Brussels (BRU) $263
- Frankfurt (FRA) $206
- Madrid (MAD) $231
- Munich (MUC) $206
- Zurich (ZRH) $229

Members of Continental Airlines‘ frequent flyer program can earn double miles when they book a hotel room with Marriott.

For every $1 spent at Marriott hotels, Continental customers will be awarded with up to four miles.

To take advantage of this promotion, they must book a hotel room at Marriott hotels between now and April 30.

The additional miles may take up six weeks to be credited to your Continental Airlines’ frequent flyer account.

British Airways is offering discount business class seats on flights from a number of U.S. airports and London.
You can fly in business class from U.S. to London for $1998 round-trip. The fare does not include taxes or fees.
You have buy the ticket no later than Feb. 16. Travel period: April 1 through May 24.

US Airports where you can fly from include: New York Kennedy (JFK), Newark Liberty International (EWR), Boston (BOS), Philadelphia (PHL), Washington Dulles (IAD), Atlanta (ATL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD). You can get other comparable flight deals from all other British Airways’ US and Canadian gateways.

British Airways subsidiary OpenSkies offers each-way business class flights from New York Kennedy (JFK) to either Paris Orly (ORY) or Amsterdam (AMS) at $1,099.
Book and buy no later than Feb. 16. Travel period is the same as the British Airways sale: from April 1 through May 24.
These fares — a 30 percent lower than OpenSkies’ regular business class fares, are based a round-trip purchase, and do not include taxes or fees. A Saturday night stay-over is required.

The global economic crisis is heavily affecting cargo and passengers traffic in Uk and Europe.

Passenger traffic at major British airports was down 6.3% in January compared with a year earlier, The Associated Press reported.

At London’s three major airports traffic fell 8.9% in November and 6.9% in December compared with a year earlier. In January, Heathrow’s traffic fell 2.1%, Gatwick’s dropped 10.8% and Stansted’s was down 11.2%.

In the continental Europe, Frankfurt Airport — Europe’s second busiest airport, recorded a 10.4% decline compared with the same period last year.

The hotel industry in the U.S. is experiencing the worst downturn since the aftermath of 9/11. usatoday.com reported some data provided by Smith Travel Research, a firm that specializes in the hotel industry.

- Hotel occupancy fell sharply during last year’s fourth quarter, including an 11% drop in November. Revenue declined $828 million in November, compared with November 2007
- The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show 90,000 fewer employees at hotels and motels in November than there were a year earlier.
- The index, which measures the stock performance of hotels and other lodging businesses, fell 56% last year — a steeper drop than the Dow Jones U.S. index, which dropped 39%.

Luxury hotels are hardest hit by the economic downturn.

They are suffering a combination of weak economy and the “AIG effect” — companies that are concerned about being seen as spending too much after insurance industry giant AIG was blasted by Congress for spending $440,000 on an executive retreat at a California resort after being bailed out with taxpayer money.

National Business Travel Association found that 96 of 147 corporate travel managers surveyed in October suggested their employees switch from luxury hotels to those with lower rates.
In November, luxury hotels experienced a bigger decline in occupancy — 15% — than other types of hotels, according to figures compiled by Smith Travel Research. (source usatoday.com)

Even If analysts expect occupancy rates to continue to deteriorate this year — some warn hotel industry will not recover until summer 2010, they predict that the big-name chains will survive.
Although new construction slowed last year, many projects that had been planned before that are being completed. In the USA, more than 1,400 hotel projects are expected to be completed this year, compared with 1,330 last year. This increase in rooms available this year will add to the pressure on hotels to cut rates.