The share of business travel bookings made online by travelers relative to phone or email with an agent fell for many entities in 2020. It seems that in a crisis, many humans trust humans more than machines to have the latest info. Technologists and travel management companies are working on ways to help resume growth…
Employee safety is paramount for organizations. Because travel is a big part, providers involved in risk, security and mass communications in recent years added travel services to their portfolios. On the flip side, for organizations that focused people risk management mostly on their traveling people, 2020 showed there’s much more to it. To serve evolving…
An agreement announced this week between Lufthansa Group and Sabre, parties with a contentious and litigious shared history, implied a mutually beneficial path forward for airlines and global distribution systems. However, there are many unknowns, and not everyone will be a winner. If Lufthansa and Sabre can agree on GDS distribution of ancillary services and…
With reaction, assessment and recovery on their minds, corporate travel professionals understandably did not focus closely on airline distribution developments this year. Inasmuch as they did, for some, it was a question of how the relevant systems could help the response to the pandemic — or not. There’s some debate about how soon the usually…
American Express Global Business Travel is nearing an agreement to acquire 30SecondsToFly, a chatbot-maker serving travel management companies. The 30SecondsToFly engineering team would join the Paris development shop that GBT obtained in its deal four years ago for travel and expense system provider KDS. Its product folks would report to GBT’s EVP for product and…
Flight Centre Travel Group acquired WhereTo, a travel booking software provider used by businesses including Walmart. The parties didn’t disclose terms of the deal, which closed in June. Formerly called WhereFor, WhereTo of late styled itself as a challenger to SAP Concur on the large end of the market. It started as a consumer travel…
Job No. 1 for today’s managed travel program is understanding fluid government and supplier policies, and preparing travelers for what they’ll face on the road. Safety aside, crossing state or country borders is challenging, if not impossible, depending on the latest entry and exit rules. No one wants a traveling employee to run into unexpected,…
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