Historic economic growth buoyed the mood in the United States in 1999. Unemployment was under 4 percent that year, and real median income had grown by nearly 15 percent compared to 1993. The flywheel was spinning with high-productivity and and rapid wage growth—much of it, like the year before, driven by technology.
That all comes through loud and clear when reading through BTN issues from 1999. At the same time, however, business travel practices are maturing quickly. The move from paper to electronic processes is sweeping through the industry and the idea of labor optimization, resource optimization and rationalized processes is leaving no stone un-turned. Match that with an environment full of mergers and acquisitions among large companies that already were managing travel programs, and suddenly there’s an opportunity to join forces, unify policies, processes and technologies, and let duplicated resources drop out of the equation.
Plus, pulling some already massive travel volumes underneath a single corporate client, and travel suppliers are suddenly in an environment where single corporations are spending more on travel than many full agencies were spending less than 10 years before. Travel managers also are gaining more clout with suppliers, extracting better—and more nuanced—deals and their companies are asking them use everything at their disposal to reduce costs.
Throughout 1999, tales of merging companies ended with mandates to reduce travel costs, renegotiate supplier deals and drive compliance levels alongside cheaper online booking rates to bring a fully optimized travel program to the table.
Superstar travel managers—a number of whom still operate in the industry today—emerged from this training ground. In the timeline below, you’ll find Cindy Heston at Thomson Consumer Electronics, Kevin Iwamoto at Hewlett-Packard, Andy Menkes at Republic National Bank, Dorian Stonie at Verifone and Mark Williams at the newly joined up PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
The latter is just one example of an incredibly fast-paced travel program reorganization that occurred in 1999 as part of a merger. There were lots of others: BP Amoco and Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) merged for about $27 billion and reorged the travel program, Allied Signal and Honeywell for about $14 billion in stock swaps. Boston Bank and Fleet Bank joined together for about $16 billion. All of them had travel programs to unify, and they are examples of wildly profitable companies that were driving costs out because they could. Companies were making enterprise technology investments for the long haul and corporate travel platforms were swept in as a part of the vision to centralize and control all procurement categories.
You’ll find a number of companies in the timeline rolling out multidimensional purchasing platforms. Concur Technologies was one, but also core travel players like Amadeus and American Express were getting into that game.
Along with the technology investment came mandates to reduce costs, and there was a ton of creative dealmaking that included pay-as-you-fly strategies with airlines and corporates alongside the expansion of bulk buying deals, between carriers and agencies as well as hotels and agencies. It was risky, and American Express got burned early in the year with a bulk buy on Virgin Atlantic, when it couldn’t offload the inventory.
On the corporate side, Bloomberg expected an increase of 25 percent in travel volume for 1999 since it had hired so many people the previous year, but it still pressed its travel manager to show year-over-year savings. “I manipulate our contracts to the fullest extent,” said Bloomberg travel manager at the time Joanne Mineo. “I always go with the lowest cost.” The new policy dictated that travelers leave their homes in the early morning and return by 7 p.m. to avoid an extra night hotel stay. Mineo tracked traveler-by-traveler booking patterns and reported back to managers on anyone acting laissez-faire with the policies.
Global technology firm ABB based in Zurich, on the other hand, was pushing all long-haul travel through three hubs to align with preferred suppliers, even if that meant long layover times or other inconveniences for travelers. Oracle realized savings from mandating nonrefundable airfares.
Alternatively, many travel buyers were pushing online booking, not only to realize lower agency fees for such bookings, but also because the phenomenon of “visual guilt” was coming into play. Travelers could see all the fares and they felt bad about spending more when there was the chance to spend less. Travelers who called into agencies seemed to have no such compunctions, racking up tickets at a 15 percent premium over those booking online.
The big firms were looking for big global deals and the business was getting complex for suppliers. Airlines attempted domestic and transatlantic marketing deals and alliances. Companies like Hewlett-Packard and Thomson Consumer Electronics brokered some of the first joint agreements. The pressure was so high to cut Transatlantic agreements that American Airlines began to offer alliance-type contracts that included British Airways before the airlines’ antitrust immunity was approved (it was ultimately rejected). AA insisted the move was a-OK because the U.S. carrier was not consulting with BA on pricing.
The general feeling throughout 1999 was “bigger is better” and it seemed everyone was looking for volume. That included agencies, GDSs and technology companies. As a result, there was a lot of M&A activity in the industry to grow footprint and a the single agency’s ability to serve those growing clients. Companies were also positioning themselves for future growth by pursuing initial public offerings and, therefore, generating the investment capital that would allow them to bulk up with more and more technology to optimize more and more processes. There was also a very strong drive toward direct connects in the tech and agency communities, but the capital to make that happen would ultimately prove steep and development timelines loooooong (like, we’re still not there yet).
In the meantime, a few companies in Europe were looking at the possibility of not traveling so much. Not for financial reasons, but for environmental ones. Big name companies like Volvo and IKEA were questioning how much travel should be enough and was there any way to reduce the impact of travel on the environment? The article below from long-time BTN contributing editor Amon Cohen was possibly the first to address this topic. Take a look and see how far we’ve come in 25 years—you may be surprised.
Also, don’t forget 1999 was the year of Y2K!
It’s a long read today, so settle in and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
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European Buyers Cast Green Eyes on Travel Suppliers
By Amon Cohen
When thrashing out a supplier deal, a travel manager usually asks only
two questions: Will it save money for my company and will it improve
service for my travelers? Now a small number of travel managers in
Europe are asking a third question: Will it save the planet?
Swedish
construction and real estate company Skanska has become the latest to
adopt an environmentally friendly travel buying policy. Hotels in
particular are being scrutinized for their greenness in matters such as
recycling, energy conservation and use of toxic chemicals. Those
suppliers with strong environmental strategies will be pushed up the
preferred list. Those found wanting may ultimately be removed.
Most
of the pressure for change is coming from Scandinavia, the region at
the forefront of the world’s environmental consciousness. Volvo and IKEA
are among those adopting or looking at green travel buying policies but
there are signs of interest elsewhere in Europe, such as Anglo-Dutch
giant Unilever. The U.K. also is home to cosmetics and toiletries brand
Body Shop, arguably the world’s most progressive company in the realm of
ethical purchasing.
Skanska was stung
into adopting a green purchasing policy this year after it built a
tunnel with certain controversial chemicals, leading to rioting by
environmental campaigners. The new policy extends to the purchase of
services as well as materials and travel manager Cathrine Wickerts
started her quest in August by sending a questionnaire to all suppliers,
inquiring about their environmental management policies. She also
furnished a list of products that Skanska does not want its suppliers to
use.
The program will take time to
build and no suppliers will be punished immediately but, said Wickerts,
”I can forsee that if a hotel does not have a green policy it will not
be a supplier to us. This will influence our choice of hotel group from
next year.”
However, taking the moral
high ground will not always be easy. What will Skanska do, Wickerts
said, if an airline with a poor environmental record turns out to be the
only one flying to one of the company’s key destinations?
Skanska
also has manipulated its internal processes to be more environmentally
friendly. The company has a fee-based relationship with its agency and
passes on the transaction fees to the individual cost centers purchasing
the travel. However, it has lowered the internal fee for rail tickets
to encourage train travel at the expense of air and automobile. It also
has an incentivized deal with Swedish Railways, which pays discounts for
increased usage by individual travelers as well as the company as a
whole.
In
addition, Skanska is attempting to encourage the biggest money and
environment saver of all: not traveling. Wickerts is rewriting the
corporate travel policy instructing travelers to reconsider whether a
conference call or videoconferencing could replace a physical meeting,
and whether the number of Skanska representatives traveling to the same
meeting could be reduced.
Body Shop
also finds the benefits of limiting travel are not purely environmental.
Head of business ethics and sustainability Nicola Amos believes it is
well worth any travel manager’s time to investigate adopting an
eco-friendly policy. ”When there are environmental efficiencies to be
gained, there also are economic efficiencies, so there is always a
business case for it,” she said. ”It doesn’t require huge creativity;
it is mainly common sense.”
Each
year, the company publishes in its annual report exactly how many trips
its executives have made and how many miles they traveled by air.
Clearly, if those figures rise the following year, it is not necessarily
an indication of failure but, said Amos, ”we have an understanding of
the potential impact we have on the environment through our traveling,
and we look to limit it by measures such as videoconferencing and
regional instead of global meetings. The figures enable us to set a
benchmark and encourage us to ask if we could have adopted a more
efficient approach to travel.”
Like
Skanska, employees are encouraged to use public transport, with rail
urged in preference to air or private car, and buses or subways in
preference to taxis.
Body Shop adopts a
systematic approach to screening all suppliers with which it does
significant business, including service vendors. They are asked to
complete a questionnaire and then, if Body Shop is not satisfied, it may
ask independent auditors to probe the supplier further. All employees
are provided with buyer guidelines, some of which are obligatory and
some of which are preferred. It usually helps Body Shop whittle down to a
fairly short list except in the case of the airlines–all of which, of
course, are great polluters and consumers of fossil fuel. ”In cases
like that we assess how progressive they are in mitigating the effect
they have on the environment,” said Amos. ”We want to see how
committed they are to public reporting and setting targets.”
IKEA
is another company preparing to let hotel groups know that from next
year it is interested in their green credentials, although it will not
immediately drop offenders from its directory. ”I cannot say we will be
that strict from the first year but it is a tendency for sure,” said
Yves Galimidi, travel manager at IKEA’s treasury group InterIKEA.
Following
companywide guidelines issued at the beginning of the year, Unilever
also has started to interrogate travel suppliers, asking them questions
such as whether they have a travel policy and whether they audit the
success or otherwise of that policy. Unilever also asks airlines about
what steps they are taking to control emissions. Business services
manager Ian Hall said environmental criteria are ”certainly a
consideration” when Unilever chooses its suppliers. ”Any organization
that actively promotes the environment is of greater interest,” he
said. ”If all things were equal between two suppliers and that was the
only differentiating point, then it would make a difference.”
At
present, Unilever is not banning travel suppliers that fail to meet
green criteria but, said Hall, ”as time progresses, and these issues
become more important, that could happen.” A similar view is shared by
Volvo, which asks suppliers for environmental information in its travel
tenders. However, assistant travel manager Christer Lindskog feels the
car manufacturer cannot start banning travel suppliers from its list
because there are no internationally set standards by which to judge
them.
Volvo has talked to Green Globe,
a U.K.-based spinoff from the World Travel & Tourism Council, but
although suppliers can pay Green Globe to carry out environmental
audits, there is no independent assessor of green-ness as yet for the
industry. Even so, Lindskog believes the very fact that Volvo is asking
questions is making suppliers take notice.
”A
supplier’s environmental performance does not have an influence on our
decision, but just by pointing out that we are considering it influences
them,” he said. In any case, Lindskog added, Volvo has an easy hotel
choice in Scandinavia thanks to the pioneering work in eco-friendliness
for the lodging industry by Scandic Hotels.
Also
praised by Skanska’s Wickerts, Scandic adopted an overtly green policy
in 1993 for its 126 hotels (110 of which are in Nordic countries). Every
room in its 20,000-strong inventory is converted when due for
refurbishment to recyclable materials, such as wooden floors and
surfaces and cotton bed materials. Metal and plastic are avoided as far
as possible. Scandic claims that 97 percent of the content in such rooms
is recyclable, the main exception being the mercury used in mirrors.
The
group also is attempting to reduce its use of energy and water by 30
percent over three years, often using simple conservation measures such
as lowering the temperature in bedrooms that have not yet been sold.
Other initiatives include getting rid of portion packs in bathrooms and
dining rooms and switching to biodegradable detergents.
In
all, Scandic has adopted 2,000 different environmentally friendly
measures. Marketing and information vice-president Gunnar Brandberg said
the group’s green strategy was helping it to win customers. Brandberg
said, ”Large companies are adopting green policies and so are
government departments in Scandinavian countries.
_______________________________________________________________________
SatoTravel agrees to acquisition by an investment
group, ending the airline ownership of the D.C. agency. Investment group
ownership is unusual—at the time—for a travel agency. This group includes Peter
Ueberroth, who had a long history in travel, including heading up Carlson
Travel Group.
British Airways joins pursuit of small business segment
with a dedicated incentive program, following in the path of American, Continental
and United, which reported success from such programs since 1997.
Continental has plans to expand its program internationally, while BA’s program
is limited to the U.S. market.
Hotel programs trend toward stricter policies and include
fewer preferred properties. “Everyone is driven by finance and cost-cutting,”
according to one major travel buyer.
Delta implements a $1 surcharge for bookings that do
not come through its own website. BTN writes: “…like it or not, it’s clear that
experimentation with fare levels based on how tickets are distributed is here
to stay.”
Big buyers press airlines to bridge the revenue gap
created by agency commission cuts by increasing discounts, particularly on
pricy business routes. Buyers said airlines were surprised by how much “clout” buyers
had to shift share and enforce policies.
As airline commissions evaporate, more companies move toward
the ARC-accredited corporate travel department structure to avoid agency
transaction fees.
Hewlett-Packard inks one of the first airline
alliance contracts with Star Alliance partners Lufthansa, SAS and
United. Kevin Iwamoto is the buyer behind the deal.
Sabre Group’s Business TravelSolutions teams with
procurement provider CommerceOne in a strategic alliance to offer
one-stop shopping for business needs from “chemicals and computers to airline
tickets and hotels.”
Amadeus debuts corporate booking and management
information system Amadeus Corporate World in Europe. The tech has two “sides”—a
self-service reservation module and a reporting module for program administrators.
Plans are in the works for a separate tool specifically targeting firms that
use SAP/R3.
Tiered pricing for booking fees becomes prevalent as self-service
and touchless tickets become more commonplace. Thomson Consumer Electronics cuts a deal with Maritz Travel that cuts the per-booking fee based on the
former’s overall usage of Worldspan’sTrip Manager booking tool.
Hewlett-Packardsubsidiary Verifone achieves
54 percent online bookings for its travel program just 8 months after deployingInternet Travel Network’s Global Manager system. Young travel manager Dorian
Stonie also notes that self-booked fares hit 15% lower than agent-assisted
bookings—an observation that many companies begin to note in 1999.
E-Travel debuts ETLink, becoming the first
online booking tool to connect corporate buyers and travel suppliers without a
CRS intermediary. The system links with Continental, Pegasus Systems and
Hertz, with plans to add more airlines, rail, limo and another car rental
company. Several other tech vendors are looking at the potential of direct
links.
American Airlines begins offering alliance-like deals
to corporate buyers, despite not having antitrust immunity established with British
Airways.
After getting caught holding the bag on a bulk buy of Virgin
Atlantic seats, American Express renegotiates the arrangement for a
more traditional discount-for-volume agreement. Despite this, bulk buying does
not lose its allure. It becomes the talk of Corporate Travel World just a month
later as major agencies look to control travel costs for clients. “We are going
to have to risk some of our own capital if we are going to save money for you,”
said Amex president of Corporate Services Ed Gilligan.
Hotel companies begin to adjust rate programs, expanding
them beyond domestic U.S. properties and recognizing the ability of small- and
midsize companies to consolidate marketshare.
Oracle buys E-Travel. The move comes right before SAP
is scheduled to integrate travel into its enterprise resource system. Oracle is
the latest in a line of vendors that promises to streamline end-to-end travel,
expense reporting and management reporting.
American Express launches American Express One to pull together the agency’s midmarket business.
TWA chairman and CEO Gerald Gitner cedes his CEO spot
to William Compton. The embattled airline, which announced its 10th
consecutive earnings loss, searches for a turnaround strategy that draw
high-yield business travel back to the airline. Some believe it is looking to
be acquired.
NationalCar Rental launches Global Odyssey,
a new reservation system designed to speed up the rental process and provide
agents with comprehensive rate info at the time of booking.
Hearst and Allied Signal both pilot Concur’s e-procurement solution Employee Desktop, another attempt at the “all in
one” procurement shop to source everything from cleaners to computers and then
enable expense reporting. The Concur solution does not yet include travel.
Amoco travel manager Malcolm Teixeira builds a customized
electronic hotel request for proposal tool, a streamlined version compared to the
National Business Travel Association’s version.
Rosenbluth International begins a string of acquisitions
with the purchase of Boston’s Aquarius, a $200 million agency. Execs
telegraph more buys in “Spain, Italy and Latin America.” It actually acquires Biztravel.com in August and then announces in September that it is heading for an initial
public offering.
IBM unveils a full website transformation that allows
employees to link with preferred car and hotel vendors and access and book
distressed airline inventory. The company was still in RFP process for its
official online booking system but planned to integrate it. The overhaul is
part of IBM’s effort to purchase all goods and services electronically, but
also opened the door to direct links that would help suppliers take costs out
of the booking process.
Bloomberg reduces travel vendors in the wake of a mandate
to reduce travel costs while increasing travel volume by 25%. The company
drives 99% compliance to the program. Joanne Mineo created the program—she
worked in house for Bloomberg but was employed by Journeycorp Travel
Management.
Microsoft and MasterCard ally to roll out the Microsoft
E-Commerce Alliance to help companies sell their products over the worldwide
web.
AXI hits the open market after its 2-year exclusivity
deal with American Express. Microsoft Corp begins offering its corporate booking
technology to agencies, airlines and other suppliers. American Express
continues to offer the product to its clients.
Trip.com releases Intellitrip software that “robotically
searches” for low airfares on the websites of more than 19 participating
suppliers, as well as in published and nonpublished fare databases of the CRSs.Galileo invests in the company and gets exclusive license as the only
CRS that will provide the tech to agencies.
The four owner carriers of Galileo—US Airways, United, KLM
and TAP Air Portugal—sell off their stakes in the CRS.
Newly merged PricewaterhouseCoopers debuts a new unified
travel policy and renegotiated contracts will all travel supplier categories. “By
not having a program in place we were losing money with every passing day,”
said then PWC travel systems director Mark Williams.
Galileo debuts a range of online and electronic
tools, but one stands out for its foresight: ObjectSpace, in which
Galileo had invested $5M, demonstrated prototype applications that would notify
travelers of flight changes or delays via “cellular phone” or Palm devices and rebook.
TWA restructures its sales team name a new lead Gary
Ravan and hiring three regional and four national members. The plan is to go
after smaller accounts “not big enough for Delta.”
Navigant International companies all rebrand to the
Navigant name to short circuit perceptions that it is a consortia.
Pay-as-you-fly strategy at Lufthana, once a pilot
mainly for Siemens, begins to test new companies. Pay as you fly works off of
e-ticketing and only charges for a flight after the traveler has taken it. U.S.
carriers roll out similar plans in the following months, but airlines are
taking a risk with it.
AA interlines e-tickets with Canadian Air on Sabre platform, enabling users to book one ticket with both airlines and enabling exchanges.
Turf battles among airlines—especially around Boston and up
and down California—results in opportunities for buyers who suddenly have many
choices of airlines to fly on the routes. In order to get deals, “some airlines
are nearly giving away domestic to get international,” said one buyer.
Aviation consultant study “The Y2K Threat to Air Traffic
Control” from The Boyd Group and RMB Associates issues stark warning: “despite
the happy face put out by the FAA, our findings are not comforting. There
almost certainly will be ATC fallout from Y2K, and we hope it does not include
airplanes.”
Delays rack up over the summer travel season. According to
the Air Transport Association, 76% more flights in the U.S. are delayed
in July 1999 than in the previous year. Fingers point to an old air traffic
control system that industry players say must be replaced before inevitable
gridlock occurs.
General Accounting Office issues report that the Department
of Energy could slash millions from its travel budget each year if it managed
travel better.
General Motors takes its travel program global,
setting up a regional management structure and also holding suppliers to fee
structures based on supplier performance. Travel manager Kevin Killeen established
metrics based on average costs and traveler satisfaction as KPIs for the agency
and DOT-tracked on-time performance for airlines.
Amadeus, Galileo and Sabre roll out technology
that displays flight options and connections by airline alliance. Star
Alliance is the first to use it.
Loews Hotels roll out curbside check-in via handheld
computers. They also begin issuing cell phones to guests, enabling them to
access services no matter where they are on property.
Arco cuts 15% of travel costs through a consolidation
effort. Commodity manager Johhn Guarneri led the initiative to consolidate
seven operating companies into one program.
Amex debuts @Work purchasing portal, following
similar platforms like Concur’s Employee Desktop and Sabre’s CommerceOne and others.
Internet Travel Network changes name to GetThere.com.
Amadeus files initial public offering papers in Madrid.
AA-BA acknowledge defeat of their 3-yr effort to
fully integrate sales and operations, though they remains committed to the
larger Oneworld partnership.
Delta announces that it will provide managed
travelers with a PIN number to access negotiated rates through the Delta SkyLinks
website. The set up will include the ability to capture the data for travel reporting.
Sabre’sBusiness Travel Solutions client Allied
Signals says it will push online bookings to 70% in the space of 18 months.
Client says it’s “a demonstration of they way we should all be connecting to
our customers and suppliers.”
Oracle E-Travel ties direct connect Hertz and rail
bookings back to the GDS passenger name record in what looks like a back-end batch
update.
British Airways, Continental, American Airlines and
others begin negotiating penalties into contracts for non-performance of
corporate clients.
Choice Hotels begins installing computers in guest
rooms. It plans to install 50K machines in the final quarter of 1999. The
program is called SuiteLink and the hotelier plans to charge $9.95 for
the amenity.
British Airways increases commissions to agencies in
a big to regain market share. It is also seen as an emergency interim measure following
the European Commission ruling in July that BA’s override incentive
payments to agents were anticompetitive and illegal.
Pegasus Systems partners with Hilton and Hyatt as well as corporate clients Siemens and Seagram to produce a
small meetings booking system that will allow planners to search hotel
databases for blocks of up to 50 rooms.
GetThere.com files S-1 registration with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission and plans to go public.
Thomson Consumer Electronics is the first out of the
gate to broker a Continental-Northwest joint global deal. Equal
discounting for all flights kicked in on Sept. 1. Travel manager Cindy Heston negotiated the agreement.
Corporate mergers spur new sourcing exercises that consolidate
big travel spend with fewer suppliers. Allied Signal and Honeywell,
Bank Boston and Fleet Bank, BP Amoco and Arco, Hoechst Marion
Roussel and Rhonepoulenc Rorer are just a few.
Atlantic Excellence—the alliance among Delta,
Swissair, Sabena and Austrian airlines—breaks apart as Delta embarks
on partnership with Air France and Austrian hitched its wagon to Star Alliance.
European policy makers press for air passenger rights,
having identified “30 unfair elements” in IATA’s standard conditions of
contract. The U.S.
IBM e-Business Services provides Hertz with e-commerce
tools, looks to do same for other travel industry suppliers.
Carriers announce they will fly light capacity on New Year’s
Eve due to Y2K concerns.
United cuts agency commissions from 8% to 5% in third
annual round; Air Canada, Air France, Alaska, American, American Trans Air,
America West, Continental, Delta, Midwest Express, Northwest-KLM, TWA and US Airways
follow within 2 weeks.
ABB plans trio of European air hubs to optimize
business travel through fewer suppliers and save 23% on travel budget. Long-haul
traffic will go through three set hubs to leverage deals to an unprecedented
degree with airlines that dominate them.
Sabre acquires publicly traded Preview Travel,
merges it with Travelocity and then spins off that merger into a separate
publicly traded unit and locks in a 5-year exclusive contract with America
Online. Sabre retains control of 70% of the public company that is now
larger than biggest rival Expedia.
Buyers eye direct connects to their suppliers, but the vision
goes far beyond reality. “Direct connections are here, but we’re just not sure
how quickly travel managers will move forward and actually see cost savings,”
said one industry exec. E-travel, GetThere and Via World Network are working toward solutions but fast-changing tech standards to XML are delaying
final versions. The threat of developing something prior to a Y2K meltdown also
isn’t helping.
Delta buys Comair in a $1.8B acquisition
European buyers at Shanska, Volvo, IKEA and
U.K. cosmetics retailer Body Shop begin looking at travel from an
environmental angle.
Fairmont-Canadian Pacific merger creates largest luxury
chain in North America and gives Fairmont the capital to grow globally.
Hoteliers add phone fees for in-room internet use that ties
up phone lines with modem activity. Starwood has a rocky start with the
fees that started after 20 minutes. They bumped it to an hour. Hilton stuck with fees after 30 minutes.
Proctor & Gamble sign a new contract to bring a
Lotus-Notes based expense reporting solution to more than 60K employees in 15
languages. The system is supplied by Momentum Business Systems of Montreal.
Buyers press for Southwest to offer more access to
content through the GDS. At the time, SWA is only distributing through Sabre and
its own website.
United and TWA block an IATA initiative that
would give all corporate clients a unique ID number that would allow them to
track their air spend across all IATA member airlines. The system is instead
adopted as a ‘recommendation.’
American Airlines moves in on the alliance territory
Delta left behind in Europe, seeking antitrust immunity with Swissair and Sabena.
Meeting planning technology platform PlanSoft Corp raises $24 million in venture capital led by Cornerstone Equity Investors and
Comcast Interactive Capital.
Singapore Airlines first to abolish agency
commissions entirely.
Association of Corporate Travel Executives appoints
WorldTravel Partners-BTI exec Ron Wagner president of the association.
_______________________________________________________________________
Elizabeth West is the editorial director of the
BTN Group. She has reported on the business travel and meetings industries for
24 years. Beth was editor-in-chief of Meeting News from 2006 to 2008 and
director of content solutions for ProMedia Travel from 2008 to 2011, when
ProMedia was acquired by Northstar Travel Media and merged with BTN. She became
editor-in-chief of BTN in 2015 and editorial director of the BTN Group in
2019.
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