When To Greenlight an Open Booking

(click for a larger view)

When does it make sense for travelers to book outside the corporate channel?  Whenever you can get through each of these three gates:

1) Will the open booking data be acquired quickly by the corporate traveler security system?  This is a show-stopper for a lot of sites.

Some solutions are to use a tool like ProcureApp, or getting travelers to forward their bookings to an itinerary management tool, like TripIt.  Soon, we’ll see data capture solutions from Concur and GDSX, among others.  If getting the data is not a problem, then onward…

2) Will the  consumer site provide cost-competitive prices?

The Future for Travel Management Companies

Managed Travel 2.0 has a huge implication for travel management companies (TMCs).

Namely, the business model for TMCs is going to change.Here’s how I see it:

Fifth in a series on Managed Travel 2.0

First, let’s start with the core issue – the booking transaction.  It’s the center of the TMC’s universe.  They organize and price their business around this function.  Everything else is basically an ancillary service. It’s all about the transaction fee.

No surprise that clients view the transaction fee as a bull does a red cape.  It’s highly visible, a tempting target, and instinctively from a procurement perspective, it’s something to attack.

Google – the Ultimate Direct Connect Platform?

Let’s connect some dots.

Dot 1: Google is in a quandary. It needs to enter big markets with high growth opportunities.
Dot 2: Google likes the travel industry. I’ve heard estimates that about 10% of its revenues are attributable to travel.
Dot 3: There’s a big travel-related search market that Google hasn’t cracked. It sits behind the walls of the GDSs.
Dot 4: ITA Software has deep expertise in airline pricing, shopping and availability searches. ITA powers

The Israeli Army Knife of Self-Booking Tools

You know those Swiss Army knives?  The ones that have 3 different knife blades, two screwdrivers, pliers, a fork, spoon and tweezers, all in one casing?  Well, I found the Israeli equivalent in the self-booking tool category.  Atriis is the tool’s name.  In addition to online self-booking, it includes: