By JOE SHARKEY


Boosting morale and
cutting costs while giving
workers time with family.


Even as companies tighten spending on business travel, many employees are actually spending more time on the road in the scramble to generate more revenue. At the same time, as household budgets are being squeezed , people are cutting back on holiday and vacation trips.

As a result, industry executives say, business travelers and their companies have become more resourceful in figuring out ways to have some fun along with the work without spending a lot of extra money. In many cases, it is cheaper to add a leisure trip to a business trip because some costs are already covered.

“Given the fact that a majority of business travelers we survey tell us they’re traveling as much, if not more, it’s not surprising to see that more people” are adding leisure time to business trips, said Jim Cohn, a spokesman for Orbitz for Business, the corporate travel division of Orbitz Worldwide.

Because they are more intensely affected by the indignities of air travel and other annoyances, business travelers love to commiserate with one another about life on the road. But a lot of them actually like to travel on business, according to recent research by Egencia, the business travel division of Expedia Inc.

In that survey, with 2,400 travelers responding in North America and Western Europe, 39 percent described themselves as “experience-hungry” travelers who strove to balance business travel with leisure interests. Many respondents mentioned “how they enjoy traveling for business,” the survey said.

“They actually like business travel and would be happy to travel more,” said Rob Greyber, senior vice president in North America of Egencia.

Besides the obvious boost to morale, encouraging employees to spend a few extra days on the road can sometimes even cut costs, he said.

For example, this year airlines reintroduced minimum-stay fare rules aimed at discouraging business travelers from using cheaper advance-purchase fares. The tactic presumes that a business traveler is loath to stay away from home over a Saturday night or for extra nights, and will opt for a more expensive fare without the restrictions.

Staying over the weekend, then, can lower the fare paid by a company “because they now have the Saturday-night stay built in,” Mr.Cohn said. He added that some companies were scheduling more regional meetings on Mondays and Tuesdays or Thursdays and Fridays to accommodate “people who choose to stay a long weekend.”

Pete Angles, a sales manager for a big pharmaceutical company, Galderma, said he traveled “a lot nationwide and, depending on the circumstances, I’m often working to combine a business trip with leisure.”

Mr.Angles said that his wife, Cristina, sometimes came along, depending on the destination.“The company has already covered my airfare, and I’m usually able to extend the corporate rate for a few extra days at a hotel, so it works out,”he said.

In a recent Orbitz for Business/Business Traveler Magazine Quarterly Trend Report, three-quarters of the 450 business travelers responding said they had extended a business trip with some leisure time in the last year. More than a third said they had coordinated a business trip to accommodate leisure travel to a desirable location.

Mr.Cohn of Orbitz for Business said that given rising travel costs, it made sense to tack some family leisure travel onto a business trip in which “part of the cost can be absorbed through the work trip.”