Travel Leaders Turns to Membership Model for Global Expansion

This week in corporate travel, we’re thinking about the various paths to international growth.

Travel Leaders Group, the largest travel agency in the U.S., is taking new steps to compete on a global level by adding 40 new member agencies — many former Amex partners — to its corporate arm. Travel Leaders already dominates in North America, and is now turning to this membership model rather than franchising or partnerships.

Speaking of global impact, we also have industrywide news straight out of this week’s Skift Forum Europe, including interviews with executives from British Airways, Uber, Airbnb, and more.

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

— Sarah Enelow-Snyder, Assistant Editor 

Featured Stories

Travel Leaders Picks Up Former Amex Partners in Corporate Travel Push: Travel Leaders has turned to a membership model instead of franchising or partnerships to build out its global presence in the corporate space. It’s one way to grow without costly acquisitions, although more acquisitions are probably on the way too.

Hertz Wanted a Cool Website: It Ended Up With a $32 Million Legal Nightmare: It’s kind of amazing how many things went wrong.

Uber Didn’t Listen Enough to Cities, a Top European Exec Concedes: Uber has tried hard to change its image in recent years, but has it worked?

Event Planners See Opportunities Beyond Downtowns: Convention and visitors bureaus promote all corners of their destinations to entice both planners and conference attendees, using both technology and tried-and-true marketing methods.

The Future of Travel

British Airways CEO Says Transformation Is Not Over Yet: Alex Cruz has not always done the popular thing, but the changes he has made have made British Airways a more financially stable airline.

Amazon Is Doubling Down on Travel, Just Not in the Way You Think: Turns out it’s through its cloud-based services that Amazon is embedding itself in the travel and restaurants sectors. The company’s recent hiring hints at the scope of the opportunity.

Sabre Will See Revenue Fallout From Jet Airways Collapse and 737 Max Grounding: Sabre is engaged in a tough but necessary technology transition. Beyond the system outages it has experienced recently, some of the events impacting its financial results, namely the Jet Airways financial collapse and the Boeing 737 Max groundings, are beyond the company’s control.

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

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