San Diego – Participants at last week’s Global Business Travel Association convention showed a stronger spirit of collaboration on alternative airline distribution than in years past. Notwithstanding mixed takes on the specifics, attendees and speakers reinforced the theme that corporate customers need the same sets of product and service options regardless of where they shop. New and updated distribution… Read More »
San Diego – Southwest Airlines is redesigning its approach to corporate relationships. No longer relying on individual salespeople to look after all of an account’s needs, the carrier is assembling teams to handle contract implementation, analytics and customer service. “We know we were not easy to do business with,” said Dave Harvey, recently promoted to vice president of… Read More »
San Diego – During the Global Business Travel Association convention here this week, Jay Campbell interviewed Carlson Wagonlit Travel chief executive officer Kurt Ekert about the latest announcements on the IATA New Distribution Capability program. On this eight-minute recording, Ekert describes some of the challenges and explains why he’s not worried about the economics. Jay also asked about… Read More »
San Diego — To some, the TripActions marketing takeover at the Global Business Travel Association convention this week was misplaced. Isn’t the company targeting the middle market? Co-founder Ariel Cohen sees it differently. Acknowledging that TripActions was not quite ready to serve huge multinationals, Cohen said it’s on the roadmap and will happen sooner than you might expect.… Read More »
New Jersey-based chauffeured transportation company EmpireCLS is building new mobile experiences for travelers and affiliates. While the traveler app has familiar ride hailing app features including booking, driver info and car tracking, it’s not meant to deliver “on-demand” pickup as promised by Lyft and Uber. It does give travelers a modern, mobile option for booking EmpireCLS’ brand of… Read More »
Continuing the furious pace of NDC-related announcements around the industry, Amadeus said American Airlines and BCD Travel agreed to join its NDC-X program. AA is the first North America-based carrier to commit. BCD joins U.S.-based American Express Global Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel, and Australia’s Flight Centre. For Amadeus, like Sabre and Travelport, incorporating NDC means mitigating content… Read More »
PredictX is demonstrating a chat and voice assistant designed to save corporate managers time seeking answers and sending messages about booked travel. The data analytics firm is talking to potential first adopters for the system, which can use voice or text apps like Facebook Messenger, SMS or Slack. In a briefing, executives showed examples of queries a travel… Read More »