The Coming Death of Business Travel As We Know It

The current crisis in business travel has a lot of parallels to the late 1990s when travelers began to defect from the practice of visiting or phoning their local travel agencies in favor of booking their trips online. Corporate travel agencies such as American Express Global Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel, and the major corporations they service, are faced with the prospect that droves of their Gen-X and Gen-Y employees are ignoring their mandates to use the prescribed corporate booking tool to book a negotiated rate at Marriott or an American Airlines flight, for example. Instead, these rogue bookers-gone wild want to stay at a Sheraton or W closer to their meeting, fly JetBlue, and they feel compelled to book unauthorized brands so the travelers can wrack up their Starwood Preferred Guest or True Blue points and miles instead. The Ship is Leaking Consider then the position of Alicia Tillman, vice president of marketing and business services for American Express