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

‘Not A Friend’ Of The Travel Manager: AA Turns Another Screw With Auto-Rebooking Ban

“Corporate customers object to American Airlines decision.” Is this even news anymore? This week’s disclosure that the carrier will crack down on automated rebooking when fares drop casts uncertainty over a spend management practice widely used by corporates and travel management companies.  On May 1, AA published revised agreements governing travel agency relationships, with updated…

Gillespie: Firms Could Cut Up To 30 Percent Of Trips With Little Or No Economic Loss

Corporations focused a procurement lens on travel en masse beginning around the turn of the century. The new emphasis on spend management surfaced questions about the return on investment in trips, and with the 2007-2008 financial crisis, companies began demanding answers. Some industry organizations attempted to answer the demand with research, but it did not…

Berlin-Based Startup Tagtu Resolves To Make Business Trips More Productive

Downtime is nice, but are we getting enough done on trips? In its quest to maximize business travel productivity, one Germany-based startup is pulling from themes in pre-trip approval, return on travel investment and the pandemic- and sustainability-driven emphasis on fewer but longer excursions. Called Tagtu and founded in 2021 by business travelers from outside…

Courts: Travel An ‘Essential’ Function In Certain Corporate Roles

A federal appeals court on March 28 upheld a district court ruling that Molson Coors was not in the wrong when it fired a sales executive who could no longer travel for work due to health issues.  According to court documents, the employee, Melchior George, was responsible for Molson Coors’ largest customer, Buffalo Wild Wings….

Dispatch 3

We broke the news on December 1 but it’s still sinking in. After hearing no mention of it on investor calls, we tried to contact the loquacious JPMorgan Chase analyst Jamie Baker to talk about it. We didn’t get a hold of him. This week, Baker told AA, “It feels as if you are taking…

At Travel Incorporated, Amgine’s AI Platform Pushes Agent Productivity 

Under pressure to improve efficiency, travel management companies are working to automate responses to travel planning requests from travelers sent by email. Contacts of this type make up a significant portion of incoming requests for many TMCs.  That figure is 60 percent at Atlanta-based Travel Inc., one of 10 TMCs that has installed Amgine’s technology…

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