The Race to Capture Unmanaged Business Travelers — Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report
Skift Take
Upside hopes working with The Wall Street Journal will attract high-yield and repeat business travelers to its service. We've seen before that media-linked booking sites rarely have staying power. As a customer-acquisition move, though, it could pay off.
The Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report is our weekly newsletter focused on the future of corporate travel, the big fault lines of disruption for travel managers and buyers, the innovations emerging from the sector, and the changing business traveler habits that are upending how corporate travel is packaged, bought, and sold.
As startups like Upside and Lola vie against industry incumbents like Concur Hipmunk for the wallets of the lucrative, unmanaged- business-traveler segment, acquiring repeat customers is crucial.
Upside is partnering with The Wall Street Journal on a booking site aimed at high-yield, unmanaged business travelers in order to try and solve that challenge.
We spoke to Upside founder Jay Walker about the tie-up, and he was excited about the collaboration between the two brands.
"There is a deep shift from a transaction model to a relationship model mediated by the mobile phone," Walker told Skift. "The Wall Street Journal is saying we're in the pol
