Where artificial intelligence will take the process of booking or altering a business trip is anybody’s guess. Travel management companies have embraced AI for text-based communications between travelers and travel counselors. Chatbots have had their ups and downs. Autonomous agents are fascinating and, some say, spell doom for online booking tools and put TMCs on…
The consensus among execs at airlines, travel management companies, global distribution system firms and other tech intermediaries is that NDC should become mainstream this year (if it hasn’t already). Not all buyers are like-minded. Industry metrics reflect a stall in momentum. Many corporate customers remain unconvinced about growing NDC. Some program managers who had enabled…
Amadeus named Decius Valmorbida president of its travel unit in August 2020. A native of Brazil, Valmorbida originally joined Amadeus in 2004 and has been a member of its executive committee since 2017. He spoke on Tuesday with The Company Dime during a live interview on the LinkedIn Audio platform. Among other topics, he responded…
Few companies have made as dramatic a C-suite housecleaning as quickly as travel and expense software firm Emburse. Save for its CFO, the company’s leadership page is entirely different than it was at this time last year. Emburse is the product of several acquisitions, going back nine years to private equity owner K1 Investment Management’s…
[CORRECTIONS, Oct. 7: Information originally published below related to servicing capabilities in Biz+ was inaccurate. The article was revised.] Booking Holdings’ Kayak For Business small and medium-sized enterprise travel offering is coming into its own after years in the making. A bevy of features in the new “Biz+” premium level fetches $20 per trip. Biz+…
Plaintiffs in several class-action lawsuits filed over the past 18 months accused hotel chains and third-party intermediaries, including STR and Amadeus, of conspiring to raise room rates. Some of them alleged anticompetitive effects from the use of sophisticated pricing algorithms. They also argued that the U.S. luxury hotel market is heavily concentrated among a few…
Global distribution system providers are in a “precarious” position thanks to changing economics and roles, according to former Sabre SVP and chief scientist Ben Vinod’s new book, “Mastering The Travel Intermediaries.” Vinod wrote that the adoption of New Distribution Capability means “disintermediation of the GDS is a foregone conclusion,” with the GDS share of the…
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