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Posted Sept 1, 2010
The big news from last week was not that United and Continental passed Department of Justice scrutiny. It was that they did it by giving Southwest an incredible gift. In a behind-the-scenes deal, Southwest was granted 36 slots at Newark from Continental as part of a slot divestiture that cleared the merger of the DOJ's one area of concern. As a result, the DOJ dropped anti-trust proceedings and the merger has cleared a major hurdle on its way to approval.
Posted Aug 31, 2010
In my last two pieces on this subject I explained that airline suppliers still incentivise travel management companies in the belief that this will bring them greater volume and share despite the inroads they themselves have made direct with the corporate sector. Also because some fear what they may lose if they don't as they get denied access to TMC bookers and account managers if they are not "in the programme." I also explained how the shape of these deals has changed in order to react to the removal of commissions and subsequent new style management fee and transaction fee contracts.
Posted Aug 23, 2010
I'm an avid user of consumer flight-search tools. I always have one or two trips I'm planning at any given time. I use a handful of flight search engines on a daily basis, always checking fares at least once or twice a day (you'd be surprised how quickly options and fares move around). I'm also a general believer that flight search options out there are pretty good. Especially for domestic travel, it's not hard to quickly know what is available and for how much. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement or that some folks aren't doing some interesting things. I wanted to draw your attention to a few innovations in flight search that I think are poised to become mainstream.
Posted Aug 23, 2010
After 42 years in the business and three years out, I am still aghast that almost all corporations I meet and hear about have not been able to crack the compliance issue. By this I mean their directors, executives and workforce being given a travel policy and complying with it.
Posted Aug 20, 2010
Congrats to Ron DiLeo of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives! Ron will deliver a keynote speech at 9 am Wednesday Sept. 22 at The Beat Live in Chicago.
Here's Ron's pitch.
Posted Aug 20, 2010
Air France-KLM U.S. vice president and general manager Christine Ourmières recently updated us on corporate contracting among SkyTeam's joint venture partners (including Delta). I also asked her about a few distribution topics. Joint alliance-GDS negotiations? Don't hold your breath. Revised agency compensation programs for Delta's TMC clients? There were some questions at first, but now everything is cool, according to Ourmières.
Posted Aug 19, 2010
Consultant Terry Jones, best known as the founder of Travelocity, doesn't think the global distribution system execs should be concerned about Google's planned acquisition of ITA Travel. He also said people in his circles expect Google to spin off ITA's reservations business. Here are some tidbits from my interview with Jones, also a Rearden Commerce board member, chairman of Kayak and former CIO of Sabre, at the National Business Travel Association convention last week.
Posted Aug 18, 2010
Rearden Commerce CEO Patrick Grady always has been highly quotable, but recently it seems his zinger machine is on high. "It's not bravado," Grady said in the midst of calling TripIt and the like just a "feature" rather than a real business. In June, he talked about how he thinks booking tools were commoditized and has since said "They're all going away." Speaking about Rearden's new partnership with Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Grady made some, well, interesting comments about his company's other big travel management company partner, American Express.
Posted Aug 18, 2010
Many National Business Travel Association convention attendees cut out on the morning of the last day to avoid overbooked fights and delays, but I tend to stick around for the final education sessions. Along with a few stragglers, I attended the Federal Aviation Administration panel discussion last Wednesday hoping to gain a bit more clarity or information on the next-generation air traffic control system (NextGen), or to learn something new. Thirty-four slides later, I hadn't.
Posted Aug 17, 2010
I attended the NBTA Convention in Houston last week. Frankly I have been to so many NBTA conventions, I have lost count (this was probably my 22nd or 23rd convention). What was shocking to me was how there was so little change in the content of the program from those I attended back in the early 1990s. Sessions on travel policy, expense management, globalization, vendor negotiations and meetings management represented the bulk of the content. There were a few progressive sessions on the social Web and mobile apps (the session I spoke at), but in general the lack of innovation and progressive thought was quite evident. Why is the corporate travel industry so stagnant? What does this mean to the state of corporate travel technology? It is my belief that a major culprit is turnover.
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