We have not yet made any decisions, but plan to once business travel resumes. We are having initial discussions with our TMC to discuss possible options.

We've been gathering information from our airline reps as well so we know all of our options. For good and bad, this information continues to change and be updated sometimes on a daily basis.

For Michigan State, we've had an unused ticket program for a number of years through Conlin Travel. This is a collaborative venture in which they manage all of our unused tickets and provide us with monthly reporting. When we receive the report, we add some formulas to calculate when tickets are expiring within 70 days and color coding according to the airline and their rules. Any ticket expiring within 70 days, has a value of >$300, and ticketed on an airline allowing name changes is available to anyone at the university to use. There is no exchange of funds between departments, colleges, and units. The program benefits the entire university by saving over $1.3M each year in unused tickets we would have in the past just let expire. For airlines in which we have a contract, we are able to leverage our "waivers/favors" towards waiving exchange fees, which further adds to our savings.

With COVID-19 pandemic, we're in the same position as everyone else with regards to unused tickets. However, we have been able to obtain over $476,000 in refunds. Many were done quickly before our Airline Account Managers had that ability taken away. The U.S. Department of Transportation ordered airlines to refund tickets in which the airline had canceled or significantly delayed flights. Conlin Travel worked with a third party to develop an algorithm to analyze our unused ticket data. Once identified, Conlin Travel went to the airlines and asked for refunds on our behalf. For those tickets that were purchased with personal credit cards, Conlin reached out to travelers directly for permission to seek refunds. Our other two preferred travel agencies have also identified tickets eligible for refund and have filed them with the airlines for refunds.

Our Athletics Department is mandated to use Anthony Travel; therefore, it was easy to accept UATP cards from Southwest and Delta Air Lines in exchange for COVID-19 canceled tickets. The Athletics Business Office will manage use of these funds in collaboration with coaches and Anthony Travel.

We are now working with our preferred travel agencies and airline partners to get extended validity dates for tickets that expired during the pandemic. We hope to have success in getting these reinstated and utilized by our travelers once travel restarts at our university.

Debbie

We are moving to a model similar to Michigan state, after hearing about their process previously. It's a great program, and thanks for sharing! For the COVID credits we are consolidating to UATPs with the same validity duration and waivers given to the individual tickets credits. We don't want to start using cash flow when the travel starts to return, as much as possible. We are working on embedding the account numbers in Concur for our travelers.

We are going after as many refunds as possible (Anthony Travel has been amazing about getting us actual dollars back quickly) and from there we are going to UATP cards if possible. We don't have enough spend on a couple carriers to qualify, so we too are going to create a model similar to Michigan state (thanks Debbie!).

I am now focusing on how to communicate to the community that what they thought they had (an airline credit based on the criteria when then cancelled in May/June) is no longer valid. Anyone talking about how to approach this?

Here is my outline of the communication we will be sending to the travelers and bookers about the UATP account consolidation. It's not finalized yet, but this is where we are. I added a couple notes in parentheses.

 UATP cards will be issued by 4 major US carriers; America, Delta, Southwest and United
Tulane’s finance department to issue internal credits for qualifying tickets refunded to the UATP card, allowing UATP usage on a first-come first-serve basis. (I am merging the Concur withdrawn ticket report, altered to include the department codes and account numbers charged, with the actual UATP account report of all credits added. This will assist the finance department in accurately crediting the accounts.)

 Tulane’s finance department will add a new expense type in Expense to facilitate UATP charges. (when a UATP credit is used to purchase airfare, we will add the charge to their Expense account, the employee will be required to allocate the expense same as they would if the corporate card was used. This will continue until all the UATP funds are depleted.)

 Each UATP card will be configured in Concur to automatically apply to straight ticket purchases for each airline, respectively. (the traveler will book airfare as normal, no additional steps needed for unless they want to split tickets)

Split ticket purchases currently require agent intervention**
The TMC can implement an inhibitor to prevent split ticket purchases if requested
**Standard agent assist fees will apply

 Service fees cannot currently be issued against the UATP card so all UATP transactions will require agent intervention to process service fees. A GDS system upgrade planned for 10/1/2020 will allow our TMC's back office quality control system to utilize the traveler’s profiled card to process the service fee via automation, eliminating the need for agent intervention.

We are currently waiting for all our UATP accounts to be finalized, we have two already, and then we will send the communication out to all travelers.