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Posted Jun 28, 2010
The Beat is delighted to announce two distinguished industry executives confirmed to speak at The Beat Live, Sept. 20-22 in Chicago. Headlining our travel business conference are Hogg Robinson chief executive David Radcliffe and Travelport GDS president and CEO Gordon Wilson.
Register today: www.thebeat.travel/live
Wilson and Radcliffe are among the most influential executives in global corporate travel. Radcliffe will take questions from The Beat's Jay Campbell in our live interview format, and Wilson will deliver a keynote speech with audience Q&A. Visit our registration page for more details on the agenda: www.thebeat.travel/live
Register today. The Beat Live will take place at the W Chicago City Center.
www.thebeat.travel/live
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 Jul 20, 2010
Got an opinion or idea? Of course you do! You read The Beat. Here's your chance to speak in person to our influentual audience of corporate travel and technology executives at The Beat Live in September: Read on to learn how to submit a pitch for our 2010 Keynote Vote ...
Posted Jul 7, 2010
Outspoken, witty and very smart, The Beat Live's usual suspects are back. Airline industry experts Dave Hilfman of Continental Airlines and Holly Hegeman of PlaneBusiness Banter will return to The Beat Live as master of ceremonies and lunch speaker, respectively. Highly rated by attendees to our first two editions of The Beat Live, these instigators are joined in kind by Rearden Commerce's Tony D'Astolfo, whose impersonation last year of John McLaughlin from ABC's The McLaughlin Group was as hilarious as his panel discussion was educational.
Register to attend here: www.thebeat.travel/live
D'Astolfo will again moderate our session known as The Views, in which multiple participants are tasked with presenting and debating positions on industry issues. Hilfman returns for what may be the industry's best recurring emcee performance, while "outspoken" is an understatement for airline critic Hegeman, whose unabashed bashing and praising is the ideal lunch accompaniment.
These top performers will band together with AA managing director of distribution and merchandising strategy Bridget Blaise-Shamai, Hogg Robinson chief executive David Radcliffe, Travelport GDS CEO Gordon Wilson and other experts for what we aim to make the best yet installation of The Beat Live.
Register today for our early-bird rate. The Beat Live will take place at the W Chicago City Center.
www.thebeat.travel/live
Posted Jul 2, 2010
In light of Thursday's news, we thought readers might benefit from reading an interview with ITA Software co-founder Jeremy Wertheimer that took place in September 2009 at The Beat Live and was published that month in The Beat. The interview occurred a few weeks after Air Canada said it suspended work on a new reservations system constructed by ITA. Wertheimer took questions from Jay Campbell and audience members. He discussed the Air Canada development as well as other topics related to airline technology, faring and merchandizing, the complexities of making things simple, tailored selling by airlines and the point at which consumers get perturbed by too much information...
Campbell: ITA Software and Air Canada were working for many years with a lot of effort and a lot of money to build a host reservations system and you didn't even get to the scariest part, which is actually converting. How far did you get?
Wertheimer: The product is built. The analogy we like to use is, "I built this artificial heart, now it's just a simple matter of doing the heart transplant. Who wants to be first?" In a nice way, we spent a number of years learning exactly what they wanted. They were wonderful teachers, both in terms of what an airline needs and doing that schizophrenic dance of being very new and very forward-thinking in terms of the new things they wanted to do--unbundling and rebundling and having travelers take care of themselves instead of needing the servicing of employees--and also supporting the full range of legacy systems. Plus [they are a] big flag carrier, a big international carrier and the icing on the cake, a member of the Star Alliance, which has its own additional rules--in case you don't have enough. So they were a nice partner and that partnership is still there. We are still working with them and they are still supplying resources to help us. Essentially, the code for the inventory system and res system is done. The departure control system, which is the airport system, we're still working on. We'll be finishing those over the next year. We'll be rolling it out at a certain rate with Air Canada and they'll be making announcements over time. And now we're talking to a number of other airlines about rolling out the whole system or pieces of it.
A traditional inventory system is flexible the way Henry Ford was flexible at the beginning: You can have a car any color as long as it's black. You can have any product you want as long as it has a fare basis code that identifies it, and as long as it is settled a certain way. Our inventory system, when it wakes up has no idea what anything is. You tell it. It is all in data. It is not in software or burned in. So you can say, "This is the kind of product; we only have some number of seats and this is how we sell them. Here is another product called lounge access, keep selling those. Here is a product which is how many skis we can take on the plane and maybe that depends on the plane. Here is a product that is someone else's product, maybe hotel rooms, and here is how you handle that."
Posted Jun 30, 2010
American Airlines is refusing to accept the status quo in corporate travel distribution, pushing a strategy to move all indirect distribution to its XML-based "direct connection" to enable personalization, merchandizing and negotiated corporate "bundles." You've read about these moves and the strong industry reaction in The Beat, and now we're thrilled to announce that AA's new managing director of distribution and merchandising strategy, Bridget Blaise-Shamai, has agreed to field 30 minutes of questions in our Hot Seat session at The Beat Live, Sept. 20-22 in Chicago. Register today...
www.thebeat.travel/live
AA named Bridget Blaise-Shamai to run distribution and merchandising strategy following her three years as vice president of AAdvantage Marketing. Blaise-Shamai joined AA in 1995 after she spent time in Central Europe working on privatization plans for various state-owned companies. She earned a BA degree from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Washington University, St. Louis.
Blaise-Shamai accompanies Hogg Robinson chief executive David Radcliffe, Travelport GDS CEO Gordon Wilson and other industry leaders as confirmed speakers for The Beat Live. Register today for our early-bird rate. The Beat Live will take place at the W Chicago City Center.
www.thebeat.travel/live
Posted Mar 19, 2010
Mark your calendar for The Beat Live, taking place September 20-22 in Chicago.
Posted Jan 22, 2010
Stay tuned for location and dates for The Beat Live 2010. We're aiming for September again. We're looking at US. cities with a rocking beat. We loved Cleveland and we loved Austin ... where's better? Feel free to suggest locations or speakers and content by emailing us here.
Posted Sept 25, 2009
Posted Sept 25, 2009
The Beat's readers named Southwest Airlines the 2009 Supplier Of The Year, ProMedia.travel announced Wednesday during The Beat Live.
Polled this summer, readers of The Beat were asked which company in each of six supplier segments they "most admire for its policies, management style and service for business clients." Those who voted for their own company were disqualified.
Other winners included:
• American Express for most admired payment system
• Hertz for most admired car rental company
• Marriott International for most admired hotel company
• Concur as most admired technology provider
• Continental Airlines as most admired airline
• BCD Travel as the most admired travel management company
(from left) ProMedia.travel CEO Tim Reid, Southwest Airlines corporate sales and distribution director Rob Brown and The Beat founder Jay Campbell
(from left) The Beat founder Jay Campbell, Concur director of travel and industry relations Suzanne Fletcher and ProMedia.travel CEO Tim Reid
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