Service

Much of the rationale for a managed travel program is providing appropriate and satisfactory service to corporate travelers. That means working with airlines, hotels, ground transport firms, travel management companies, tech providers and others to optimize each step of a trip, from booking and planning through to post-trip reports and surveys.

Coverage areas include:
• Travel agents, both real and virtual
• Employee engagement
Mobile technologies for travelers
• Variability in hotel services
Personalizing travel
Visa processing travel

Offshore Providers Also Face Staffing Issues As Demand Bounces Back 

Holes in staff coverage are causing a corporate travel meltdown. For business process outsourcing firms, this may represent an opportunity even though they are not immune to many of the same issues. EXL Services, a $1.1 billion New York-based firm that supports an undisclosed portion of American Express Global Business Travel’s operation, dealt with the…

Longtime TMC Leader Fragale Joins TakeTwo Travel Solutions As North America President

TakeTwo Travel Solutions, the new international travel management company founded by former Corporate Travel Management exec Chris Thelen, hired veteran TMC leader Patrick Fragale as president of the North America region. Fragale’s résumé includes three years as an executive vice president at Valerie Wilson Travel (now part of Frosch), two years as president of Protravel…

Hotel Service Is Still Below Par, But Execs Say It’s Improving

The hospitality industry’s labor issues make it hard to provide the services many corporate travelers expect. According to hotel company execs, service levels are recovering but at different paces depending on location. Travel buyers understand the staffing dilemmas facing many properties and try to ensure travelers know what they’ll encounter. Beyond the immediate term, some…

Business Travel Is Back But Staffing, Service And Satisfaction Are Stressed

Business travel is back but management infrastructure is not, creating a stressed-out industry. For now, corporate travel professionals are doing whatever they can that’s within their control. That includes managing expectations among the traveling population and with senior execs, retraining employees on policies and procedures, updating profiles and preaching patience. A little finger-pointing is going…

CWT Enlists Analytics Startup To Predict Corporate Travel Demand

Corporate travel is finally showing signs of a sustained recovery, but its susceptibility to exogenous shocks has never been more apparent. Will it return to the levels of 2019, and if so, when? That’s anyone’s guess. CWT wants its answers to be more informed and, in February, began a three-month pilot with a startup analytics…

Enthralled By Venture-Backed Startups, Locomote Tries Something Different 

It isn’t easy to make a going concern out of selling standalone corporate self-booking software. Commenting last year on why he didn’t want to be in that business, veteran travel tech exec Greg Webb, CEO of Travelport, couldn’t resist using the word commodity. He said corporate booking tools were often part of broader solutions and…

Op Ed: Jeff Klee On Innovation, Moats And The Corporate Travel Buyer

AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee argues that consolidation, legacy tech and outdated thinking sacrifice the industry’s greater good. Travel buyers, he asserts, must demand more innovation from providers. A few years ago Elon Musk and Warren Buffett had a pretty entertaining Twitter spat about moats – not the canal-around-the-castle kind, but the economic kind that companies…

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