Executing an acquisition or merger can be tricky, and there have been several in the corporate travel space recently. Katharine Farrell of the Dots & Lines consultancy looks back at previous examples of brand consolidation in the industry and contemplates the pros and cons. May was an interesting month for the corporate travel industry. The…
Spend management company Emburse, parent of Chrome River and Certify, last month acquired data analytics firm Data Visualization Intelligence and last week bought app maker Roadmap. At a time when corporate travel remains mostly dormant, the forward-looking stories of these deals mirror classic business tales of challenge and opportunity. “These are two companies that built…
Remember the good old days when corporate travel professionals would see 50 percent compliance to preferred booking channels for lodging as a big challenge? Nowadays, 50 percent of anything would be everything. Still, duty of care calls for companies that expect to travel again to address this issue, ensuring relevance for the question of whether…
Few things jazz up Rock Blanco more than new platforms, which helps him stay cool in the face of trial and error. Such is the World Travel Inc. chief innovation officer’s relationship with Alexa, whom he had to dump for a friendlier dance partner. Now, World Travel is working with Rome-based Askdata on a conversational…
Chicago – The August Global Business Travel Association convention continued the corporate travel profession’s study of where policy compliance is weak and how to fix it. In particular, discussions focused on business travelers who stray from their firms’ preferred corporate booking channels. While some buyers face issues with leakage on air travel, the problem by…
Prime Numbers Technology is about to add to the small list of skills performed by Amazon Alexa for travel managers. The tech company’s clients soon will be asking the device about their programs and industry benchmarks. It’s not the only industry data firm building voice-activated travel management question-and-answer exchanges. Travel Incorporated is one travel management…
Used mostly for policy and preferred supplier modeling or to sense travelers’ wants and needs when they make bookings, predictive tech in travel management holds a lot more promise. Potential use cases for predictive analytics range from the practical to the big picture. Wouldn’t it be good to know if an employee is burned out…
