Behind the Travel Buyer’s Search for Simplicity

Corporate travel is complicated and so is the quest for travel buyers to make things simpler.

Organizational goals don’t usually align with streamlining corporate travel systems, according to new research from ACTE and HRS. While travel management companies can help simplify things, it seems like hotel chains and airlines aren’t the strongest partners when it comes to cleaning things up behind the scenes.

Check out the story below.

Behold, it’s hotel earnings season. We have the latest on which hotel giants are buckling under pressure from coronavirus-related demand drops. Choice Hotels, unsurprisingly, is doing just fine due to strong demand from business travelers.

Also, Expedia Chairman Barry Diller doesn’t seem to know how Expedia works and will maybe sell off some divisions of the company. Does that mean Egencia is in play? Doubtful since they have superhigh margins for a travel management company, but we live for the drama.

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

— Andrew Sheivachman, Senior Enterprise Editor

Featured Stories

Corp Travel Buyers Have a Hard Time Keeping Programs Simple: Travel buyers know that simplifying their programs can lead to major benefits for their organization. Corporate travel, unfortunately, is anything but simple.

Expedia Chairman Barry Diller Rips His ‘Bloated’ Company as ‘All Life, No Work’: The straight talk from Diller and Kern will likely delight Wall Street and rankle former management and current employees. Employees will have to buy into the new vision if there’s any hope it will become reality.

New Funding Will Help Colombian Hotel Chain Ayenda Push Into Peru: Ayenda’s Series A is notable for being led by Kaszek, a giant among Latin American venture firms. The industry will be watching to see if Ayenda can apply Oyo’s model of bringing brand standards to budget hotels without running up Oyo’s large losses.

Choice Sees No Letup in Biz Travel Demand as It Expands Extended-Stay Hotels: Choice Hotels had a strong year with lots of growth in 2019. The company is focused on bulking up its extended-stay portfolio to continue the trend in 2020 as corporate travelers look increasingly for more creative options.

Less China-Dependent IHG Takes Wait-and-See Approach on Coronavirus: IHG CEO Keith Barr seems to be taking quite a level-headed approach to the coronavirus outbreak. Unlike some in the travel industry, he’s not pressing the panic button yet and is waiting to see how things play out.

The Future of Travel

What 2019 Taught Us About the U.S. Airline Industry: No other country or region has an airline industry as strong as that of the U.S. What’s the secret? Have U.S. airlines cracked the perennially difficult code to airline profitability, and will it last? Skift Airline Weekly dove deep and zeroed in on trends that explain the U.S. airlines’ success.

Why Is Coronavirus Forcing Planners to Cancel Events? First the Mobile World Congress, then Cisco, then Facebook. Large events are being canceled around the world over fears of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Is this wave of cancellations justified or is it just an overreaction?

Oyo’s Annual Losses Ballooned to $335 Million in 2019: Oyo appears to be taking its once-explosive global expansion strategy down a few notches, and that could be a good thing for the young company in the face of still-uncertain impacts from the coronavirus and the reputational damage it recently suffered. These losses aren’t pretty.

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

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