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.
No one should be surprised that it’s coming, and consultant Mark O’Brien expects it in the second half of this year: higher pricing for transportation and lodging. What does it mean for corporate travel buyers? According to O’Brien, a BCD Travel exec until 2021 who now runs Avenue5 Consulting, hotel prices will be up by…
After hitting a 14-year high in 2019, passenger commissions paid by U.S. airlines to travel agencies bottomed out in 2020 along with passenger volumes, and stayed low through the first nine months of last year. The pandemic also changed the passenger mix, as mainly domestic leisure passengers made for a lower-value booking environment. Lower-value bookings…
“Buyers want it; sellers need it,” according to Harvard Business School professor Doug Chung, McKinsey & Company partners Isabel Huber and Jean-Charles Devignes, and McKinsey associate partner Tom Clauwaert. “It’s not trivial, but it’s not rocket science either.” During the early stages of the pandemic, many B2B companies considered remote interactions as a temporary patch,…
Andy Menkes has spent a career working with travel management companies — as a buyer, a TMC exec and an industry consultant. As companies assess their travel management service needs, he describes what he sees as a problem with fairness in TMC bids and offers a solution to resolve it. We are starting to see…
On Monday, Israel-based airfare reshopping tech firm FairFly announced it would roll out a hotel price assurance service to clients beginning next quarter. This follows a pandemic expansion by the U.K.’s HotelHub, which powers booking services like CWT Roomit, into lodging price reshopping. FairFly’s move came in response to “many client requests,” according to CEO…
Like the rest of the airline, United’s fare filing team shrank as a result of the pandemic. Fortunately for United, it already was looking at an ATPCO service meant to streamline that aspect of the contract management process. Built with Scotland-based tech firm Volaro in 2015, the Express Contracts system removes much of the manual…
Blockchain is a big deal for EY, so that means it’s a big deal for EY’s travel department. The professional services firm, one of BTN’s top-ten spenders on corporate travel in the United States, will test distributed ledger technology for contract support with an unnamed airline. During a BTN Group-hosted webinar sponsored by the International…
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