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

SkyLink, Another AI Startup, Automates Traveler-Agent Communications

Travel management company sources are abuzz over SkyLink, a heretofore stealth-mode firm enhancing corporate travel messaging with artificial intelligence. According to its creators, it’s bringing Silicon Valley to corporate travel. That means more than just faster and better — it’s a “fundamental rethink” that can shift “what an industry looks like,” according to co-founder and…

Hotel Engine Joins Intermediaries Creating Flexibility For A Fee

Lodging aggregator Hotel Engine has a new service allowing business clients to cancel and modify reservations up to noon on the day of check-in for a $200 monthly subscription fee. It’s a “pro” version of the same flexibility option for individual bookings, which the company said saved its members $5 million on more than 55,000…

TravelPerk Closes In On $200M In Annualized Revenue, Seeks AI Efficiencies

TravelPerk is targeting 70 percent revenue growth for 2023. That’s after the company hit $100 million in annualized revenue late last year. The Barcelona-based corporate travel agency is doing this without the benefit of enterprise clients, which it is not pursuing. Here’s a lightly edited transcript of The Company Dime co-founder Jay Campbell’s Monday conversation…

‘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….

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