So, corporate bigwhig types who don't understand technology?
The online bookings still routed through an internal travel agent for final approval and execution of the booking, but I never actually interacted with anyone. The manual bookings were the only time I ever spoke with an agent, and it was almost always to handle an itinerary that was too complex for the UI of the online booking system to accommodate.
Lots of board and CXX whigs book their vacations through their agent on their company's dime as a part of their benefits package which is actually a great deal for them. I'm more of a thrill seeker so I wouldn't use one but the average person who just wants a stable planned-out vacation that they only get once a year it's a really good idea.
I am so glad I don't work there anymore.
I worked at a place where "thou shalt" use some stupid travel agent to buy intercity train tickets. You had to call the company and pick up the paper ticket in some inconvenient place between the hours of 10-3, closed from 12-1. The ticket cost ~$5-10 more than buying it at the train station, split between the travel agent and procurement group, unless you purchased it a month in advance, and could be used for 6 months.
The "hack" was that business units with lots of travel would buy 100 at a time every couple of months, and you'd need to find a secretary with a stash to get a paper ticket. I would ply them with my wife's baking to ensure a steady supply. Not surprisingly, many tickets were wasted unused (in pursuit of saving the $5), or people took unnecessary trips to avoid wasting money on tickets (and wasting 3x more in per diems, etc).
The next innovation was to declare that the trip was an emergency, and then you could buy the ticket from the conductor, in cash. The penance for less hassle is that you had to write a sad tale about why attending a training class met some standard for "emergency" travel.
- Booking fees are itemized and stated up front. $3 for bookings handled 100% via the online reservation system, $25 if you ever have to talk to an actual agent.
- The online reservation system shows publicly listed rates as well as negotiated rates, and you're free to choose what you want within policy. The negotiated rates were virtually never the cheapest, but they also tended to come with a lot more flexibility (i.e. no change fees, refundable up to time of departure, 24 hour cancellation of hotel reservations, etc).
Those two aspects, combined with the fact that the travel would ultimately be booked to your card on file anyway (generally a corp card for anyone traveling frequently), pretty much negates any incentive to go outside of the official travel system. Depending on the trip and your travel budget, you can either go with the riskier but cheaper options or go with the more flexible but also more expensive options. The default booking fee is tiny enough to be understandable, and the incremental $22 fee ends up well worth it in the situations you need to call the travel team's 1-800 number to get you out of a bind.
The old system didn't bother me much as I was used to it being The Way Companies Are. But after being spoiled here, I dread the day I end up in another travel-heavy job and have to go back to the more typical Big Corp travel process.