CWT

TMCs Still Need More People, GBTA Poll Finds

Ninety percent of about 60 travel management company personnel polled in January by GBTA expected their firms to increase staff size in 2023 compared with last year. Forty-six percent said their companies were still smaller than they were before Covid. TMC staffing shortages and resulting service problems are not as widespread as they were several…

What To Do About Sky-High International Fares

Domestic U.S. airfare growth has moderated and there’s potential for the same in some long-haul international markets. Any company with an appreciable volume of international air travel should see it as a high-value area for spend management. According to Advito, January bookings as of last week for business class tickets to and from North America…

Dispatch 2

Before the pandemic, American Airlines crowed about adding to its sales force and growing market share in corporate travel. Conditions have changed. Both corporate travel and airline capacity growth are depressed. Improving profitability and paying down debt are top priorities. After cutting back last year on customer benefits including perks and discounts, now AA is saying goodbye to its…

Traveler Tracking Wasn’t Good Enough, And Might Get Worse

Traveler tracking and TMC reporting systems couldn’t handle the crush of cancellations as SARS-CoV-2 raced around the globe almost three years ago. Inaccurate reports on traveler locations had companies spinning wheels. Is the industry ready for another large-scale event? In some ways, yes. Mostly no. And evolving airline distribution strategies are complicating everything.  Things will…

Travel Industry Gets Reprieve From New Payment Tokenization Rules In India

After several delays, India’s central bank this fall enacted payment security rules prohibiting the storage by merchants of customers’ credit card details. Instead, digital tokens would stand in. Not entirely ready, the travel industry got an extension, to June 2024, to work out how to use tokens when intermediaries like GDSs, TMCs and OBTs are…

Another Slide Delays Recovery For Corporate Travel Providers

The business travel recovery is slipping as the year winds down. After a flattening in the spring and a pop in early fall, industry data in recent weeks showed declining volumes relative to 2019’s baseline. The rapid rebound in early 2022 is a memory and corporate volumes remain well below the peak from three years…

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