Productivity

Business travel is all about productivity — whether that relates to its fundamental use for more efficient collaboration, guarding against bureaucracy to ensure seamless collaboration, or generally purchasing the right services at the right prices so trip missions deliver the most value. It also means helping employees avoid getting bogged down in post-trip red tape. The coverage below digs into issues, processes, tools and tricks.

Some examples
• The movement of services to mobile devices and/or chatbots
• Stories about expedited airport screening and business travel’s ROI
• Trends like artificial intelligence and rewards
• The pandemic-era struggle to avoid quarantines

United Enlists Corporate Clients To Grow MileagePlus

United Airlines is asking corporate clients to help grow loyalty program membership as part of its new contracting process. “Because we do value our frequent flyer program, it is a consideration when we look at other things we might give that corporation, whether it be discounts, Jetstream [soft-dollar] funds or other things they want in…

As It Cashes In On Amex Deal, Delta’s Free Wi-Fi Expands Marketing Juggernaut

It’s nothing new for an airline to generate revenue from something other than ticket sales, but Delta Air Lines is taking this to new heights. The company expects sales of SkyMiles points to co-branded card partner American Express to top $7 billion next year. That would be about as much as American, Southwest and United…

Dispatch 1

[UPDATE, Jan. 26, 2023: This article did not properly describe ARC’s Direct Connect initiative; its definition is updated below.] We start with some good news.  ARC president and CEO Lauri Reishus told attendees to The Beat Live in December that the pandemic caused fewer travel agency closings than ARC had anticipated.  Back in 2020, Reishus…

Swiss Study Offers Thoughts On When To Teams Or Trot (Audio)

Researchers again found virtual communication offers “limited” capacity to replace face-to-face meetings. But with support for predicted reductions of between 20 percent and 30 percent in business travel volume due to trends accelerated by the pandemic, they argued that understanding how businesspeople choose between travel and virtual “has become urgent.” Researchers at the University of…

The Emotional Toll Of Frontline Labor

For more than two decades, Alicia Grandey, a professor of psychology at Penn State, has been studying how the mistreatment of frontline service workers affects their health and productivity. The behavior she examines ranges from verbal abuse to racial or sexual harassment. She also looks at ambiguous circumstances, in which it’s unclear whether any harm…

American Airlines Ends AirPass, Limits ConciergeKey For Corporate Accounts

American Airlines is sunsetting its prepaid AirPass program and, according to sources, cutting corporate allocations for ConciergeKey, the invite-only top level of its loyalty program. American gave no rationale for its decision regarding AirPass, a program that began in the 1980s and started adding corporate-level members in the 1990s.  “Beginning Nov. 30, the AirPass program…

Conferma Preps More Contactless Payment, The ‘Final Piece’ In Virtual Card Success

Sabre-owned virtual payments company Conferma Pay expects by January to provision virtual cards into digital wallets for travel bookings. It’s another means for virtual payment to dispense with 20th-century technology. Faxes now handle a minority of Conferma Pay’s virtual card authorizations to hotel properties, with more reliable, secure email and API connections growing in usage…

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