Upside Business Travel a few months ago reduced its workforce by an undisclosed number. “To set ourselves up for long-term success in serving business travelers at scale, we reduced our headcount in some areas to allow us to invest more in product development and engineering,” according to a statement attributed this week to Upside president and COO Scott… Read More »
Tripkicks is a new tech company focused on helping companies spend less on business travel through employee incentives. Its approach is similar to that of Rocketrip, which helped popularize the notion of behavioral change based on shared savings. Tripkicks’ largest investor is Acquis Consulting, which also is a strategic partner helping with implementation. Tripkicks CEO Jeff Berk is… Read More »
United Airlines established a new corporate discount program for midmarket companies that can earn those demonstrating an ability to shift share upwards of 19 percent off premium fares. Called United Propel, the program differs from other airline midmarket discount schemes in that it includes $2,000 to $10,000 in annual amenities and also will apply (as early as fourth quarter)… Read More »
[CORRECTION, July 13, 2018: The original version of this article incorrectly identified one of the owners of Atriis. Along with Israel’s Amsalem, the other co-owner is Vision Capital, a U.K.-based private equity firm.] Some travel management companies are coming to grips with the New Distribution Capability, and they’re not going it alone. Global distribution systems, agency networks, tech… Read More »
A “next-gen” global corporate travel technology and management outfit related to TSI USA is hawking services with $0 fees to corporate buyers. Called TripEasy, the startup plans to exit stealth mode this summer. The TripEasy website indicates users incur no fee for basic services including online booking, a bot, employee profiles, company policy and reporting. Five dollars per transaction adds corporate… Read More »
Longtime travel management consultant Tony O’Connor is founder and CEO of Airocheck, a firm specializing in auditing travel agency airfare markups. Naturally he has words of caution for travel buyers when it comes to the fares their travelers buy. But he also argues that markups don’t help the sellers, either. Fare markups are arbitrary price increases to airfares… Read More »
Amadeus became the tenth company in IATA’s New Distribution Capability program certified as a Level-3 aggregator, according to IATA’s NDC Registry. Amadeus previously achieved Level 3 certification, the highest level, as an IT provider. The certifications indicate a company’s ability to handle messaging via an NDC-compliant application programming interface. For aggregators, that means consuming such APIs made available… Read More »