Monday the New York Times ran an article on the “new state of normal” in terms of corporate travel. Many companies have tightened their controls over travel spend during the recession and are unlikely to loosen the reigns in the recovery. And according Directravel’s Vince Vitti, who is quoted throughout the article, companies should accomplish their belt tightening goals by cracking down on misuse, abuse and padding of travel expenses by employees.

Among other suggestions, Vitti recommends companies put the hammer down on lunches that don’t involve clients, car rentals when public transport would suffice, and even frequent flier miles that the company could claim they have truly earned since they foot the bill. As for how to achieve compliance:

“All the C.F.O. has to do is hang one or two people” for expense account padding, he said. “Then everybody will straighten out, at least for a couple of years.”

No doubt companies must do what they can to drive compliance, although the case can certainly be made for focusing on the front end (approval flows, travel tools w/ built in logic, etc.) rather than with a fine tooth comb and some very public hangings.

At the end of the day, it’s up to a company to decide how to balance their travel policies so that employees are productive, yet cost effective. Anyone who’s ever been on a college road trip or backpacked across Europe knows that travel can be done on the cheap. But as you crammed into your public bus or youth hostel bunk, could you have finalized preparation on a big presentation that you needed to give in 6 short, jet-lagged “sleep” filled hours? And are there better ways to control travel spend?

In an interview with ExpenseMatters earlier this week, my colleague Dan Ashton, recommended companies treat T&E as part of their larger pool of indirect spend. Dan says integrating it into the same spend management processes and technology as other indirect spend categories provides improvements in spend visibility, user adoption (due to use of one toolset rather than multiple systems) and compliance. If the result of this approach is costs savings and happy, productive business travelers, I would say that that beats nickel & diming employees over taxi fares.

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.