Travel Innovation? Free Webinar!

Wondering about the current state of innovation in the corporate travel industry? The fine folks at BTN Group (formerly PromediaTravel) are hosting a free webinar on this topic tomorrow.  Sponsored by BCD Travel, your panelists are Eric Bailey at Microsoft, Jennifer Steinke at U.S. Foodservice, Dorian Stonie at Salesforce.com, and me.

We’ll cover the key drivers of travel innovation, what the barriers have been, and where we think we’re going.  Perhaps most importantly, you’ll hear directly from Dorian, Eric and Jennifer – three innovative practitioners –  who are leading boundary-pushing efforts within their firms.

This live webinar runs from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm EDT this Wednesday, Sep. 29th.  Free registration and more details are here.

Come take the pulse of travel innovation with us tomorrow!

OMG! Where Are Our Travelers??

Count yourself lucky if you are a travel manager who has never had to say this.

A session in NBTA Europe’s conference drove this point home. It used the Great Ash Cloud as a textbook example of how companies, airlines and TMCs struggled to find and accommodate their travelers.

For companies and TMCs, the first place to look is

Forecast for Travel Buying Tools

Are there any better ways to buy business travel, other than the standard RFP/tender?

That’s the question I took on in Lisbon a couple of weeks ago.  This slide summarizes my views on four alternatives.

With a few exceptions, it’s not a sunny outlook.

The good news is that reverse auctions continue

Stairsteps to Data Heaven

Why is it so damned hard to get great value from the sea of travel data out there?

You’d think that corporate travel, a large and mature industry, would have cracked the code by now. And yet most buyers are still struggling to get anything more than mediocre value from their data reporting tools.

Terrific NBTA Europe Conference

NBTA Europe, with strong support from Paul Tilstone and the fine ITM staff, put on an excellent conference in Lisbon last week. About 220 delegates attended from all over Europe, plus a few of us from North America.  Topics included:

• Traveler security – lessons learned from the ash cloud
• Alternative strategies for procuring travel
• How to use travel data more strategically
• End-to-end technology (procure to pay) pros and cons
• Impact on buyers from further airline consolidation
• Social media in corporate travel programs
• Merchant fees – the next unbundling?
• And several other topics very relevant to corporate buyers

The networking and knowledge sharing was first-rate.   I’ll write more detailed posts about several of the topics that were covered. My only complaint was that I could not attend every educational session.  Kudos to NBTA Europe for launching an excellent event.  I look forward to seeing more of this high-quality programming in the years to come.