High-speed travel: Employers push one-day business trip to avoid hotel costs

As corporate budgets shrink, so do business trips. Looking to avoid paying for overnight hotel stays, cost-conscious companies are increasingly asking employees to squeeze all their away meetings into one day -- and then turn around and fly home.

Headhunter Marc Lewis, who frequently flies between coasts on his clients' tab to interview job candidates, says the single-day business trip is becoming a familiar drill. "Several clients have suggested to us that if we're ok with it, they would prefer for us to take the red-eye home rather than stay overnight," says Lewis, founder and CEO of Leadership Capital Group, an executive search firm based in Westport, Conn.