Our company pretty much follows the same as Radiance. We use the federal per diem rate for hotels and are allowed x amount of dollar per day and its different the day of travel or of its 12 hours or under you get paid x amount differently than if you were gone say for 2 weeks, which often happens.
We use a travel agent for all of our airline bookings. We've had problems with them changing their policies on us, such as charging a 40 fee per transaction and merging with another Boston company and only having 4 people in the office to handle all of their clients. I'd be interested to hear if they have lost any clients as their response time has slowed quiet a bit. We used to get e-mails instantly when we book a ticket and now we have to ask more than once for it and heaven help you if you have to have one right away. But all in all its not a bad relationship, especially considering my boss can be very picky about details, as he should since he is the traveller.
Chris68
Peer Moderator 
