Solving the Blah-Blah Travel Data Problem

Travel managers routinely rank travel data as one of their most important issues. Yet AirPlus recently reported that 56% of North American travel managers surveyed said they would not be willing to pay for better travel data.

OK, so let’s assume those buyers are reasonable folks.  How do we explain, then solve this conundrum?

Those buyers must not see much value – provable, hard dollar value – in “better” travel data.  I get that.  This industry has put up with mediocre travel data for so long that we’re used to ordinary, low-value, blah-blah data and data reporting.

AirPlus Gets A+ on Ancillary Fees Report

AirPlus has cracked the code on reporting airline ancillary fees.

Travel managers will find these reports extremely useful.  You’ll know with great  certainty what your travelers are buying from each airline. You’ll be able to answer important questions, such as:

• How much are we spending on Ancillary Fees (AF)?
• What are the biggest sub-categories of AF – baggage fees, onboard fees, upgrades, extra mileage, etc. (and therefore, implications for negotiations)?
• What’s the average

Review: AirPlus Data Reporting Tool

Credit card data is not the best source for airline sourcing projects.  I’ve said this for a long time (for example, here), but was challenged (nicely) by Jacques Lionnet at AirPlus to take a fresh look at AIM, the AirPlus Information Manager (AIM) tool.

Bottom line:  The AIM tool captures excellent airline data and is easy to use, but it has a few shortcomings that prevent it from delivering ready-to-source air spend reports.  These flaws (described below) should be easy to eliminate, and I suspect AirPlus will do so soon.