American Airlines Pivots From Managed Corporate Travel
American Airlines’ decision to wind down the 41-year-old AirPass prepaid program is a small piece of a grand strategy to alter relationships with the corporate travel community. AA during the past several weeks told corporate clients that it would reduce discounts and scrutinize underperforming accounts, according to people…
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…
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…
Booking-Serko Joint Venture For Unmanaged Business Starts To Produce
Serko last week reported progress in getting unmanaged business travel customers to make purchases on the platform it’s developing with Booking Holdings. The unmanaged market is a closely watched area of opportunity for many corporate travel players. Analysts in the spring worried that while the joint venture had…
Amex GBT’s Konwiser On Emerging Questions About Data Ownership And More (Audio)
American Express Global Business Travel in September added Evan Konwiser to its C-suite, responsible for strategy and marketing. Konwiser on Monday brought his thought-provoking self to The Company Dime’s new platform for audio events, LinkedIn, with commentary on a variety of topics. Some fresh food for thought came…
Research: In Supplier Negotiations, Lying Is Contagious
Being deceptive — or not totally honest — in negotiations is fairly common. But two experiments found that it can have a harmful effect: It can spread in an organization. Fortunately, there are measures that can curb the practice of potentially contagious excessive deception. By Leopold Ried, assistant…
BCD Travel Revs Up New Service For Unmanaged Business Travel Clients
BCD Travel launched a no-fee, easy onboarding business travel service in Germany and shared plans to expand it to additional markets next year. The company put one of its top executives, global CFO Cees Batenburg, in charge of the initiative as executive lead. The new service uses a…