More than half of travel buyers surveyed by the Global Business Travel Association this month said some airlines were rolling out programs using the New Distribution Capability “too quickly.” Four in five said they needed more info and education about NDC. Sixty percent of the 277 polled buyers said they did not support the approach…
AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee is getting frustrated by tokenism and perfunctory action when it comes to sustainability and corporate travel. On the 2022 business travel conference circuit, sustainability and purposeful travel were all the rage. Panelists at events large and small touted the urgency to reduce travel and, with it, carbon emissions. Given the chorus…
[UPDATE, Jan. 26, 2023: This article did not properly describe ARC’s Direct Connect initiative; its definition is updated below.] We start with some good news. ARC president and CEO Lauri Reishus told attendees to The Beat Live in December that the pandemic caused fewer travel agency closings than ARC had anticipated. Back in 2020, Reishus…
Airline industry folks including a top consultant and tech provider saw American Airlines’ distribution strategy revealed Monday as progress. Corporate travel management company leaders? Not as much. “This AA announcement appears to remove current content, in the name of NDC, while also limiting other content, which brings confusion to the booking process,” according to a…
[CORRECTION, Oct. 19, 2022: The original version of this article included outdated information about some Southwest Airlines leisure routes not available to Deem users via certain shopping channels. There are no longer any such restrictions.] Southwest Airlines early this year began “limited” participation in the Google ITA QPX airfare search and shopping system. Corporate online…
Education sessions at the Global Business Travel Association’s annual convention last month had a few main themes, with risk, sustainability and payment getting lots of attention. Distribution also enjoyed significant airtime, but not the hotel or car rental kind. Airline distribution sessions were packed. For many, the prevailing feeling was that the industry had picked…
AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee argues that consolidation, legacy tech and outdated thinking sacrifice the industry’s greater good.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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