I am the person who is in charge of planning travel for our company employees. I usually wind up planning three or four trips a month, mostly with only a week or two advance notice. I am supposed to get the best prices and there are usually specific times people need to be wherever. I find myself spending up to an hour sometimes more researching the options etc. I think people think it should only take a few minutes to make the arrangements. Anybody else out there in the same position? How much time are you spending?

Actually, a week or two is a LOT of advance notice! At my husband's company, most travel is planned within days...

If YOU are the one "in charge", well, then, it is your job to do everything you possibly can to be as accommodating and frugal as you can be, no matter how long it takes! The more time you spend, the greater your "experience" for the next time, and the next.

I do all the purchasing where I work. I could just do Staples.com, but Pricegrabber.com (a more time-consuming endeavor than you would think - comparing products and vendors, and avoiding "mistakes"), for one, has saved the company a small fortune.

Whether you're paid a salary or hourly wage, your "time" is purchased by your company and how much of it you spend on travel arrangements is, therefore, irrelevant, so long as you don't have other, more important, responsibilities needing attention at the same time.

How much time do you spend on your personal travel? Most of us spend hours and hours and hours "researching options". Wouldn't you?

When my brother was the road warrior, he kept his suitcase ready. Sometime he'd show up in the morning and leave in the afternoon for a multi-week trip.

Soon you'll learn the preference of the employees and it will become easier for you.

Your time spent is immaterial - the point is to get the travelers what they need - they're the ones giving up personal time to travel while you're sitting at home.

If there's too much for you to do ask for a helper - or perhaps they could send you on a course in travel planning so you could do it more effectively.

Finally - ask each traveler to fill out a form of their preferences - so you know in advance who wants what kind of seats, prefers which airline and needs what kind of airport transfers - and you have all of their FF number for airlines, hotels and car rentals.

And 3 or 4 trips a month is nothing - unless you're talking about coordinating large meetings - not just sending 3 or 4 people off somewhere. My admin did all the travel for our team - 16 people - with constant changes and trips added at one/two days notice - proably 25/30 trips a month - along with all her regular duties.

Don't worry about how much time you are spending. Sometimes a simple flight change that can't be done on-line will keep me an hour on the phone with the airline agent! If I could have done it on-line, it would have taken me literally 2 minutes. I've learnt not to sweat it.

Do a good job for those you plan travel for and they will be appreciative of the time you spend.

Do the little things that make it easy for them to travel (e.g., speed check-in for car rentals).

And, find out what is important to the company & traveller (their priorities may be different in which case you will have to decide which one you will choose to appease). For example, some car rental cars are at the airport thus saving the traveller time, but the rental agencies with cars offsite invariably cost less which saves the employer $. Depends on the size of the company you work for too of course.

nytraveler - that sounds like you've got a great admin person. I hope you treat her well!

Enjoy-la!