As it and several other hotel companies did last year, Marriott International told corporate accounts it would roll over current-year negotiated rates to next year and bypass the request for proposals process. Some companies last year agreed to that approach but others held out and insisted on negotiating new rates. The hotel company is getting…
Thanks to the pandemic, newly approved bylaws and turnover on the Global Business Travel Association board, 2021 will usher in a new era for the association. The membership has called for change, and two dozen industry professionals are vying for eight open board seats in elections that will run June 21 to July 19. The…
Cloud tech company Dropbox has never recorded an annual profit, but margins are up since 2019 thanks to remote work, layoffs and savings on travel and events. The company is betting everything on remote work. It didn’t just reorient its products to better serve customers working virtually. Execs also expect “significant” financial improvements by subleasing…
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…
The planned acquisition by American Express Global Business Travel of Egencia has multiple implications depending on the party in question. For GBT, it’s about scale, particularly in the online midmarket. GBT has long coveted this segment, which has a fresh batch of well-funded competition. The deal will avail GBT’s big corporate accounts of more attractive…
Delivering Covid-related info in the booking path is a challenge that may perpetuate outsized reliance on human support, but tech is the long-term answer. Booking tool developers hope that when corporate travelers come back in earnest, they’re pleasantly surprised by improved user experiences. Systems tap some of the same sources for Covid details that, pre-pandemic,…
[CLARIFICATIONS, March 23, 2021: BCD Travel and Sammit Khanndeparkar of Springer Nature provided additional information to help the reader’s understanding of the developments covered in this article. Firstly, while Springer in 2019 spent nearly $40 million annually on travel and entertainment in 75 countries, BCD Travel’s portion of the account represented about $11 million and 11…
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