Booking and expense tool provider KDS plans in the second half of 2012 to launch a tool for managing reservations by clients’ travelers, even if they book outside approved channels. Read More »

United Kingdom-based booking agency Citybase Apartments released what it claims is the world's first application programming interface to enable serviced apartment reservations through travel management companies' existing systems. Read More »

One of the hottest issues in travel management: who will become the dominant aggregator of data, and therefore primary intermediary, for the corporate client? Read More »

KDS last week launched what it claimed is the first fully functioning mobile corporate booking tool, offering negotiated fares, a policy filter and content from global distribution systems, low-cost carriers and rail operators. Read More »

The partnership Amadeus this week announced with Germany-based hotel portal HRS is its big play to remedy an endemic weakness in all global distribution systems: lack of independent hotel inventory. Read More »

Airberlin, Germany's second-largest airline, on Feb. 1 will introduce a per-ticket fee on many travel agency bookings through global distribution systems that are paid for by credit card, an airline spokesperson confirmed. Read More »

The European Commission provisionally has ruled that the International Air Transport Association's PaxIS data product breaches the European Union CRS Code of Conduct because it identifies ticket sales at the travel agency level. Read More »

Hogg Robinson Group delivered healthy financial results for the six months ending Sept. 30 as revenue increased 10 percent year over year to 186.8 million pounds and underlying profit before tax jumped 22 percent to 18.7 million pounds. Read More »

Air France/KLM announced it will impose a surcharge on credit card payments made by German travel agents from Jan. 20, 2012, and significantly increase its level of surcharging in the Netherlands. Read More »

Travelport GDS on Dec. 9 will cease selling domestic U.K. rail tickets, ceding the market to independent specialist rail distributors Thetrainline and Evolvi. Approximately 40 TMCs were using Travelport to book U.K. rail. By far the largest, Portman Travel announced on Nov. 4 that it switched to a direct relationship with Evolvi for bookings by its own reservation staff. Portman already was using Evolvi as its rail self-booking tool for corporate clients.

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