Does Google pay for business class flight
For intenational flights does Google allow you to book business class ? (Say 18+hour flights ) Guess they may allow that for certain level and up but not all ? Of course work related trips - 250
You should check google’s travel policy. There is a workflow and approval process for purchasing business class tix. It varies across companies.
It will depend on the cap for the trip and how much the business class trip costs. If it is within the cap then yes you can book. They are hardly ever within the cap so you are most likely flying cattle class. If you have suffered enough and saved Google a lot flying cattle class and staying in shitty hotels, then you can use some of the savings to upgrade to business and go over the cap. It used to be like that pre-covid, I haven't travelled since so it may have changed.
Google gives you a spend limit based on various factors and you book whatever fits. If you come in under budget you get credits for future trips to help if you want to upgrade those. Credits are use-or-lose, no comp if you leave with unused credits. e.g. When I flew to Tokyo, my travel cap afforded me a Premium Economy flight and 5 star hotel. Had I flown economy or found a cheaper hotel, I could have earned credits that would have helped me upgrade to Business on a future flight. That flight was years ago and I haven’t had a business flight since, though, so it wouldn’t have been useful. Google has changed how they spend money.
I don’t know about Google. But in Oracle if you are IC6 or VP+ you always fly business class. Source: I am an IC6 from OCI
At Roche even contractors book business class if it’s 6+ hour flight
I look at this thread wistfully, amazon is so f#king cheap. Please send some peanuts to the back row. No bananas, already have those.
When I worked for Amazon, on a trip to bay area we were only allowed to stay in motels. The experience was really sketchy. I rented a car and paid out of pocket for an upgrade from corolla to a Mercedes, it was likely 15 bucks more a day. And I got questions on why I did the upgrade. Even if it’s my own money. I also took a business trip to Europe before I left Amazon, we can stay at 3 star hotels, but the flight was economy only.
Google has a travel cap per trip which is automatically calculated. You can book whatever as long as you are under the cap and any savings will be kept as credit for future use within the year. The model has its pros and cons.
👆this
Short answer is no unless you’re very high up. Sometimes they will upgrade you if you are very important and need sleep for a business critical function (most people do not) for customers. But you still need it approved. So generally, the answer is no. I travel a lot for work at G, at least 1-2 a month running design workshops. I fly economy and sometimes economy plus if I can swing it under the trip cap. You can “save” up remaining caps but it takes forever.
People have a general misunderstanding how this works. There's a fixed travel budget per org per year. Sure, you may be allowed to take business class, but it comes from the budget. The difference is either you send 1x via business or 2x via economy. Many execs choose to travel via economy for this reason.
This is a pretty wrong take. Most large companies have policies around travel that allow business class for certain levels of employees (VPs and above) and also for types of travel (international or over 5+ hours). Budgets are less relevant and travel is dependent on business need not based on a hard budget constraint as those budgets are flexible given the business needs.