Travel Management Services

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The University is pleased to announce that Options Travel will be providing travel management services to make travel planning and booking more convenient for departments electing this service.

The University spends more than $5 million annually for group and individual travel-related services including air, hotels and car rentals. By directing more resources to products and services that are professionally managed and consolidating travel through one source, the University has the opportunity, in partnership with Ohio's other universities, to leverage its travel spend with airlines, car rental companies, and hotels to negotiate lower costs.

Making reservations with Options Travel is easy and convenient. The Travel Portal can be accessed by the traveler or a designated travel coordinator or travel plans can be made via telephone or email. The benefits of using Options Travel are numerous: traveler data is stored simplifying future airline ticket and other travel purchases, travel arrangements are automatically populated to the traveler's calendar, and the system stores unused/canceled airline tickets making them readily available for future travel

Traveler and Travel Coordinator Benefits

  • The responsibility for duty of care transfers from the Miami department to Options Travel.
  • Lower overall cost of the trip.
  • Discounted hotel rates offered by Options Travel.
  • Pop-up reminders to the system to remind staff of Miami travel policies (ex. Business upgrades on flights must be reimbursed to the University).
  • Time savings due to stored travel data, travel preferences and credit card information (not entering the data each time you make a travel reservation) and to reduced research time comparing multiple travel sites.
  • Travel agent availability if the trip is canceled (at an additional fee).
  • Cloning a trip for multiple travelers or recurrent travelers.
  • Viewing TSA security wait lines at airports ahead of time.
  • Having a one-stop Travel Portal for all travel news, trends, and tips.
  • Tracking of flight credits for airlines (for canceled flights). System reminders to use when booking a flight with the same airline.
  • Full Southwest Airlines integration (including Early Bird Check-in).
  • TripIt app available at no charge to organize travel plans.
  • Sharing travel information with other travelers so that similar flights can be scheduled.
  • Ability to view travel history to aid in scheduling new travel.
  • Ability to place a flight on hold for one day to finalize plans.
  • Traveler will earn frequent traveler points (Air, Car, and Hotel). Please note: Frequent flyer credits earned by the University employees for travel on University business cannot be used for personal travel (see Ohio Ethics Commission advisory opinion no 910-101). These credits must be applied to future University Travel.

Groups/Meetings/International Travel

Options Travel can also assist with group travel arrangements including:

  • Group Air Contracts
  • Custom registration sites
  • Hotel room block negotiations and management
  • Ground transportation negotiations and coordination
  • Custom reporting

Additional Fees for Travel Services

Concur airline booking: $5.00 

concur car or hotel booking (this does not apply if you add to an existing reservation:  $3.00

Agent booked/exchanged airline reservation: $18.00

Agent booked/car or hotel:  $0.00

Call to after-hours:  $22.00