Newsmaker: Radius Reorganizes, Wyndham Exec To Head Sales
01.25.2010 - Travel management company network Radius is reorganizing its executive sales leadership into three regions, responsible for growing agency membership, managing global sales and overseeing regional supplier relationships. Read More>>
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Inside Track: Boeing Travel Management Converts to CTD
01.25.2010 - Boeing Travel Management, the in-house wholly owned travel agency subsidiary of aerospace manufacturer Boeing, became an ARC-accredited Corporate Travel Department and will phase out service for its external clients during the year. Read More>>
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At PCMA Annual Mtg., Planners Urged To Convey Value
01.25.2010 - DALLAS—Industry leaders at the Professional Convention Management Association's 2010 Annual Meeting here in January urged meeting planners to hone a new skill this year: communicating the value of meetings within their organizations and to the population at large. Read More>>
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Amex Seeks Prepaid Revolution Through Buy
01.25.2010 - American Express this month completed a $300 million acquisition of online payment service provider Revolution Money, giving the network a new platform from which to explore the growing prepaid product segment of the payments industry. Read More>>
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GAO: Interchange Regulation No Panacea
01.25.2010 - A U.S. Government Accountability Office report issued late last year noted that interchange fees place an increasing financial burden on merchants but said regulation might not mean savings for consumers. Read More>>
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Payment Systems Join To Help Buyers Track New Air Fees
12.07.2009 - Payment systems AirPlus International and MasterCard Worldwide are developing a solution that would enable travel buyers to report ancillary airline charges, paralleling similar efforts of U.S. airlines, technology companies and settlement providers. However, the foundation of such a solution—an electronic miscellaneous document that essentially would establish an e-ticket for ancillary charges—will not debut until the second half of 2010, at the earliest. Read More>>
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Inside Track: IRS Reduces 2010 Mileage Rate To 50 Cents
12.07.2009 - Effective Jan. 1, 2010, the Internal Revenue Service is lowering its standard mileage rate to 50 cents per mile from the 55-cent rate for 2009. IRS's lower standard mileage rate will "reflect generally lower transportation costs compared to a year ago." Read More>>
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One-on-One with Jens Bischof: Lufthansa's N.A. Exec Takes Joint-Contractual Worldview
12.07.2009 - Lufthansa vice president for the Americas Jens Bischof spoke last month to Business Travel News contributing editor Amon Cohen about how the airline cooperates with its subsidiary carriers and Star Alliance partners on corporate agreements, signs of a business class revival and the future of unbundled distribution charges. Read More>>
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Profiles In Travel Management: Co. Scans For Multinational Savings
12.07.2009 - Security technology manufacturer OSI Systems this year completed a 15-country travel management company consolidation that offers greater control over its growing international travel spending and higher compliance and arms the company with a more accurate picture of its total travel expenditure, enabling it to procure broader preferred supplier agreements. Read More>>
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Renters Again Honor Enterprise Amid Steady Satisfaction Ratings
12.07.2009 - Car rental customers rated Enterprise Rent-A-Car the top brand for the sixth year in a row in J.D. Power and Associates' 2009 U.S. Car Rental Satisfaction Study. Read More>>
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Op-Ed: Signs Of Optimism For Next Year
12.07.2009 - Major challenges confronted corporate travel buyers in 2009. The difficult economic climate prompted additional scrutiny of travel and entertainment spending and tightening of travel policies to deliver much-needed savings for businesses. Challenges also trigger opportunities, however, and 2010 offers signs of optimism for business travel as economies stabilize around the world. Read More>>
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Op-Ed: Keep Your Eye On The Travel ROI
12.07.2009 - Despite the fact that our company specializes in managing travel for professional service firms, Ovation's clients are no exception to the recent recession-driven trend of belt-tightening, travel cutting and premium service shunning. Read More>>
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Benchmarking Europe's Biggest 2009: As European Spend Dives, Vendors Ready To Deal
12.07.2009 - The Business Travel News/Association of Corporate Travel Executives third annual European Top-Market Benchmarking Report, along with a discussion among survey participants at October's annual ACTE Global conference in Prague, provided more evidence of how dramatically the European travel buying landscape has transformed over the past 12 months. Spending is down, but opportunities for more tightly controlled management of travel programs are up. Read More>>
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Benchmarking Europe's Biggest 2009: Managing Economic Crossroads
12.07.2009 - Three travel buyers—Geoff Allwright, Airbus parent EADS UK head of travel and expenses; Honeywell corporate EMEA travel manager Cindy Van der Elst and Credit Suisse vice president in the global travel department Ben Varey—discussed transforming their travel programs during the recession and preparations for the recovery with BTN editors Amon Cohen and David Meyer in October during the Association of Corporate Travel Executives' global conference in Prague. Read More>>
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BTN's 2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report
11.23.2009 - After more than a decade of annually benchmarking the 100 biggest spenders in terms of U.S. point-of-sale airline travel, and taking several annual measurements along the way of the companies with small and midmarket air travel volumes, Business Travel News editors this year for the first time sought a clear picture of the companies constituting the large market, those that spend between $10 million and $40 million in annual U.S. booked air volume. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Sizing Up Large Market Travel Buyers
11.23.2009 - The very largest buyers always can capture travel vendors' attention, but their large market colleagues have to try a little harder. Large market travel buyers don't have the most clout, but they have enough to get supplier attention. While large market companies usually don't have to work as hard as those with smaller travel budgets to prove their value to suppliers, more size only ensures an opportunity to show what they can deliver to suppliers. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Finding Travel Program Opportunities
11.23.2009 - Corporate travel buyers for large companies this year have witnessed enhanced receptivity among travel suppliers to structure pricing agreements-with hotels leading as the most flexible with which to negotiate. Though buyers running mature travel programs have found consistent success at the negotiating table with hotels this year, they continue to find the least success in that area when it comes to traveler compliance. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Estée Lauder Puts On Meeting Face
11.23.2009 - Estée Lauder next month will begin to flow all of its meetings bookings through its new strategic meetings management program, which includes a single technology platform, policy, meetings procurement card and a core group of part-time meeting planners throughout the organization. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Business Class Use No Longer Dropping
11.23.2009 - More than one-third of those responding to Business Travel News' large market benchmarking survey this year have made business class policies more restrictive, helping to fuel dramatic declines in premium cabin usage. As those deep cuts continue to ravage airline balance sheets and remain down year over year, the bleeding in business class utilization has stopped and some even are seeing nascent signs of a premium recovery. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Expanding Travel Agency Consolidation
11.23.2009 - Many corporations with large market travel spending are expanding travel management company consolidation efforts as they target cost cutting, greater program control and maximum supplier negotiating leverage. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Keeping Buyer Control Of Hotel Rates
11.23.2009 - Large market buyers, even without the volume advantages of the largest travel buyers, are keeping hotel rates under control by boosting compliance, compiling data to benchmark their performance by city, following such best practices as vendor consolidation and enacting tiering down strategies. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Using Booking Tools As Tech Backbones
11.23.2009 - With large market company travel spending becoming more multinational, travel buyers in the segment are requiring more capabilities and enhanced functionality from travel technology to raise their control over travel expenditures and traveler behavior as they seek to bring consistency to increasingly complex travel footprints. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Co. Seeks Total T&E Compliance
11.23.2009 - Thomas Barrett, director of strategic sourcing for Ingersoll Rand—which continues to integrate his previous company, Trane, following last year's acquisition—this month spoke with Business Travel News senior editor Jay Boehmer about supplier receptivity, compliance and the budget planning process. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Embracing Meetings Management Practices
11.23.2009 - Large market buyers are following the largest travel buyers in embracing meetings management best practices, with a majority capturing data for their meetings and leveraging hotel negotiations with their transient volumes. Consultants also said the economic downturn has spurred more large market buyers to step up demand management policies for their meetings programs and centralize meetings management functions. Read More>>
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2009 Large Market Benchmarking Report: Finding Room For Making Ground Moves
11.23.2009 - Car rental contracts, while a much smaller part of the travel budget than air and hotel spending, can be fertile negotiating ground for large market travel buyers, particularly since rates are less affected by volume. Read More>>
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Carlson's Joly Plans Hotel Revival, Long-Term Development
11.16.2009 - Carlson CEO Hubert Joly's five-year plan for Carlson Hotels Worldwide, when unveiled early next year, will include a project to revitalize the Radisson hotel brand in North America, drawing a clearer line between its upscale and upper upscale properties, and the importation of successful service concepts from overseas, he said this month. On the heels of this month's agreement to sell loyalty marketing services supplier Carlson Marketing to Groupe Aeroplan for $175.3 million, Joly also said Carlson may broaden its midprice brands' international presence. Read More>>
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DOT Delays Oneworld ATI Decision
11.16.2009 - Headwinds against American Airlines' proposed antitrust-immune joint venture with British Airways and Iberia persisted as the U.S. Department of Transportation on Oct. 31 failed to meet its statutory deadline for approval. Undeterred, the chief executives at American Airlines and British Airways this month said they were confident Oneworld carriers would get the same rights as competitors in the Star and SkyTeam alliances, though neither was willing to say when. Read More>>
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Inside Track: British Airways And Iberia Advance Merger Plans
11.16.2009 - The boards of British Airways and Iberia this month signed a memorandum of understanding, bringing the airlines one step closer to the all-stock merger that's been more than a year in the making. Read More>>
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US Airways To Shift U.S. Capacity Almost Totally To Hubs
11.16.2009 - US Airways is realigning its U.S. network to focus almost exclusively on service to and from its Charlotte, Philadelphia and Phoenix hubs and three other cities, which by the end of 2010 will represent 99 percent of the airline's capacity, up from about 93 percent today. The carrier also said it would abandon a number of markets, lay off about 1,000 workers and suspend indefinitely its right to serve Beijing. Read More>>
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Some Airlines Begin To Use New Tools To Re-Accommodate Passengers
11.16.2009 - Several airlines for the first time are using customer relationship management tools to prioritize traveler re-accommodation requests. Provided by airline technology companies, including Sabre Airline Solutions and Amadeus IT group, new systems eventually will enable travel management companies to automatically re-accommodate other itinerary categories, improve response time and reduce redundancy in supplier and traveler efforts to make changes. Read More>>
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Profile In Travel Management: Deloitte Pre-Trip Tool Cuts Internal Travel
11.16.2009 - Deloitte this year vastly decreased its discretionary travel through a new pre-trip approval process that identified internal, non-client-facing and non-revenue-generating travel through an automated system that sends bookings to approvers before reservations are ticketed. Read More>>
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In A Surprise, Travelport Inks Pre-Deadline BA Content Deal
11.16.2009 - Travelport made a surprise announcement this month that it has signed a new full-content deal with British Airways until 2013. The agreement, which covers travel agents connected to both the Galileo and Worldspan global distribution systems, takes immediate effect. Opt-in levels established by Travelport for U.K. agents in March 2007 remain unchanged. In general, these fees are £0.50 to £1 and are passed on by many travel management companies to their corporate clients. Read More>>
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Mega TMCs Join In Stance On Europe-Wide VAT Dispute
11.16.2009 - American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and HRG have told the United Kingdom's tax authorities they will take a united approach to applying value-added tax to hotel booking fees as they await resolution of a European Union-wide dispute on the issue. Read More>>
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U.K. Travel Managers Raise BA, Virgin Refund Concerns
11.16.2009 - After the law firm that negotiated the settlement by British Airways and Virgin Atlantic for illegal fuel surcharges in 2008 told EuroBTN last month that it would move swiftly to address a barrage of complaints from U.K. travel managers about the administration of surcharge refunds, another 20 corporate travel managers in the United Kingdom contacted the Institute of Travel & Meetings about problems in obtaining the refunds. Read More>>
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Booker Hotelzon To Expand Mobile Service
11.16.2009 - The online corporate hotel booking agency Hotelzon told EuroBTN that it would extend its mobile reservations application to the BlackBerry, iPhone and other devices this month. It has been offering a similar service to Nokia users since September 2008. Read More>>
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New EU Regs Boost U.S. Cards
11.16.2009 - Major U.S. corporate card issuers J.P. Morgan and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are scaling up their European presence as the continent harmonizes its cross-border payment regulations. With two more important steps in the harmonization process completed last week, both banks said the improvements would make it easier for them and their clients to operate pan-European corporate card programs. Read More>>
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Op-Ed: Let Common Sense Guide Flu Strategy
11.16.2009 - One of the most serious threats to domestic and international business travel is a pandemic. In the six years since the emergence of SARS—severe acute respiratory syndrome—the majority of the business travel management profession has taken elaborate steps to prepare for the kind of pandemic defined by massive quarantines and the vast immobilization of millions of people. Several near-alarms have prompted the industry to take a closer look at subsequent developments and to determine the safest course of action for their travelers—and for the other personnel, plus their families, who are directly or indirectly exposed to these individuals upon their return. Read More>>
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Op-Ed: Suppliers Must Prove Value Or Lose On Price
11.16.2009 - In these tough times, buyers are extracting favorable pricing across the travel industry. Not surprisingly, this frustrates most suppliers—namely those who don't have the lowest prices. How many times do we hear suppliers wishing for buyers to "see the bigger picture," "don't treat us as a commodity" and "put more value on partnership"? Read More>>
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