Skift Take

Corporate travel startups have to be creative when building out their platforms due to pressure from their travel partners. One has to wonder if others will follow TripActions' lead and forge wide partnerships to get more content on their platforms.

Greetings from San Francisco, where my hotel room has no heat and sits one floor above the lobby. Never change, business travel.

TripActions announced earlier this week that it will partner with ATPCO to smooth over its relationship with the Big Three U.S. airlines. Airlines will have more control over how their content appears on the platform, and TripActions will be able to improve the booking experience with a more streamlined user experience.

The endgame is getting more rich content and ancillaries onto the platform, giving travel managers more insight into spending while giving travelers more choice. The new storefront doesn’t bypass the global distribution systems and reinforces the notion that new distribution capability remains far away from primetime.

I’ve also got a look at business travel spending on Certify’s platform, where meals and hotel stays are eating up a larger portion of travel budgets than in prior years.

If you have any feedback about the newsletter or news tips, feel free to reach out via email at [email protected] or tweet me @sheivach

— Andrew Sheivachman, Senior Editor

Airlines, Hotels and Innovation

TripActions Adopts U.S. Airlines’ Next-Generation Storefront Effort: American, Delta, and United have partnered with tech firm ATPCO and business travel startup TripActions to show how they want their fares displayed on websites other than their own. Expect others to follow this model.

Dining Gets More Expensive for Business Travelers: Meals and hotel stays are becoming a bigger cost for business travelers. Airfares have dropped, although this doesn’t help companies that dispatch their workers in cars for meetings in nearby cities.

U.S. Travel Predicts Strong Biz Travel Growth: Although leisure travel growth will probably slow this year, business travel will continue to pick up. This is good news for those who suspect a recession is on the way.

United Threatens to Cut Access to Flights Departing After September, Expedia Alleges: Is this all just posturing in negotiations between United and Expedia? It certainly could be but filing a lawsuit about it while a contract is in place takes things to a new level.

Airbnb’s Event Ambitions Won’t Disrupt Meetings Sector: Airbnb’s acquisition of Gaest makes a ton of sense for the homeshare giant, but doesn’t represent any major shift in the overall meetings and events space.

What Was Expensify Thinking With Its Pricey Super Bowl Ad? Feeling pigeonholed, the expense-tracking company bet big on the Super Bowl to break free.

The Future of Travel

Oyo Enters the U.S. Budget Hotel Market: Oyo has a seductive model of renovating budget hotels, running them efficiently through technology, and marketing them directly to consumers. But the startup risks imperial overreach by entering markets like the U.S. that differ significantly from its core markets in India and China.

In-Flight Pandering Erodes Airline Passenger Loyalty: Between credit card pitches and requests for tips, the process of monetizing the airline cabin is starting to wear on frequent flyers.

Hilton CEO: ‘We’re Not Trying to Compete With Google, Amazon and Apple’: Can a single brand ever really own a customer? We think Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta is onto something here, but that won’t necessarily stop his travel peers from trying to do that in their own ways.

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Skift Senior Editor Andrew Sheivachman [[email protected]] curates the Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Thursday.

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Tags: corporate travel, ctir

Photo credit: Delta Air Lines Inc. ordered 100 of Airbus SE’s A321neo jetliners, a deal with a list value of $12.7 billion, in a major victory for the European planemaker over Boeing Co. Bloomberg

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