Sourcing

In corporate travel, sourcing is all about negotiating deals with airlines, hotels, car rental companies and other suppliers. Of course, organizations want to get the best value, but travel procurement is about more than price. It’s also about using data to monitor performance on both sides, working with intermediaries, building deeper relationships and exploring new technologies that improve processes.

Some examples
Extending or renegotiating contracts
• Assessing marketshare and volumes
• Hotel RFPs, rates, LRA and security
Political and social considerations
Working with intermediaries

Game On: AA, Buyers Wield Leverage

Some corporate travel programs are blocking American Airlines now that the carrier has removed many fares from traditional third-party distribution channels. Observations like this one from SAP Concur align with anecdotes from several corporate buyers who are reacting to both the distribution move and AA’s overall de-emphasis of the corporate market. But preventing travelers from…

Southwest To Take Advantage As American Backs Off, Right? Maybe

Are American and Southwest switching places? No, the low-fare flag bearer isn’t going global, adding business class or assigning seats. But in some critical ways for the corporate market, Southwest is behaving more like its crosstown rival, while that rival is moving in the other direction. As it does for Delta and United, American’s strategy…

Notebook: To Outsource Or Not, A Travel Management Question

When McKinsey in 2020 talked about travel management as a candidate for outsourcing, readers shot back.  “Be curious to hear how the travel management team at McKinsey feels about this,” wrote Alō Index co-founder Leanne Turner, between jobs at the time after a pandemic layoff.  “For McKinsey to say [a] full transformation initiative would save…

Elevance Applies Traxo To ‘Tame’ Real-Time Hotel Rate Audits

Traxo made a name for itself as a fix for program leakage using email parsing. But when Elevance director of travel and events Cindy Heston brought in Traxo, she had a different sort of data-capture use case in mind: real-time hotel rate audits. Elevance, a $157 billion health insurance company with over 100,000 employees, always…

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…

Op Ed: Bryan Holmes On Upgrading Your TMC RFP By Thinking Slow

Intuition rather than analysis can lead buyers astray, according to Bryan Holmes. The founder of Bid Logic Solutions provides a few examples of how this manifests during a travel management company sourcing project and describes a more measured approach. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the…

Amazon Picks BCD Travel, Keeps CWT’s RoomIt For Lodging

Amazon is moving to BCD Travel from CWT, although the latter will continue to provide lodging services to the retailing giant. “We want to thank CWT for their partnership and work,” wrote Hillary Dallas, Amazon director of global travel and events, in a Wednesday email confirming the development. “As part of our regular course of…

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