Hilton Worldwide is no longer considering reduced commissions on its member rates, according to sources. Hilton press officials did not respond to requests for comment sent Thursday morning. This a relief for travel agents and their business customers. Yet, concern about exposure to changes in supplier revenue — especially from hotels — will remain. “We do worry about what will…
Denver — The media have a lot of baggage. Seriously, when they travel, employees at companies like CBS often lug loads of equipment. Fees for excess bags can easily swamp the cost of a ticket. On many trips, these travelers need to go beyond the airlines’ normal bag limits. Alliance partners of American Airlines and Delta Air Lines during the past…
[UPDATE, Nov. 15, 2016: British Airways and Iberia agreed to participate in Concur TripLink. A Concur official indicated that there is “no timeline to share at the moment” for when the American Airlines Oneworld alliance and joint venture partners expect to go live.] Concur signed American Airlines to its TripLink supplier-direct program. AA joins Air Canada, Etihad, Lufthansa and United…
FCM Travel Solutions soon would like you to meet Sam, a multi-platform mobile messaging service bringing e-concierge and virtual agent concepts into the managed arena. The Company Dime last month previewed the platform, which FC USA has been testing internally. About 20 users from FCM Travel Solutions’ largest corporate customer also are testing it, and its second-largest will participate as well. Based on…
It’s hard to keep track of all the startups now addressing small or unmanaged business travel. They’re applying a number of concepts including rewards, texting, personalization and artificial intelligence. They promise a better user experience than existing corporate booking systems offer. Investors during the past two years have put millions into them. One already was acquired by a more established player;…
When Bjorn Hanson last year published his preliminary outlook for 2016 corporate negotiated hotel rates, the New York University professor predicted buyers might suffer their biggest increases in years. It didn’t happen. The aggressive prognostication followed several years in which hotels outperformed expectations on rates. Entering 2016, Hanson said last month, “There was a sense that the increase in rates…
Thanks partly to rate assurance technology and data, some buyers now are thinking about setting fire to the lodging RFP process. Or, at least, subjecting it to a little controlled burning. According to 2014 GBTA Foundation research sponsored by Best Western, the hotel RFP process was taking between three and six months for more than half of 127 North America-based…
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