Andrew Sheivachman

The swift confirmation of Chao represents an immediate opportunity for the new administration to make serious contributions towards improving America's airports and highways. But as the past shows, significant change may be hard to accomplish given the divided political goals of Congress.

With the TSA caught up in a federal hiring freeze, we could see a return to last summer's security line debacle for flyers. Not to mention the potential impact of airports overwhelmed by hundreds or thousands of protestors.

It looks like travel managers are finally embracing the sharing economy in both ground transportation and lodging. Expect the growth of the sharing economy to continue in corporate travel, but it will be interesting to see if there will be a ceiling on adoption in coming years.

The complexity of traveling with pets is often a major headache for their owners. Many brands are looking to ease pain points, but a lot of work still needs to be done, especially by airlines.

Could Airbnb be on the cusp of disrupting business travel lodging in a manner similar to how Uber has come to completely dominate ground transportation? Unlikely, but it seems that a growing number of companies are becoming more lenient towards Airbnb use in their corporate travel policies.

Corporate travel is finally starting to learn lessons from the consumer travel space, mostly because business travelers have been trained by their leisure travel to expect robust booking tools and more control over their trips. The travel management companies that focus the most on improving their traveler-facing technology will win this battle, and improve their clients’ travel experience in the process.

Travelers get free gift cards, and companies save money on their travel spend. Tweaking traveler behavior through incentives isn't new to the corporate travel space, but investors seem to have finally noticed its potential.

Sitting out the race to figure out Snapchat marketing or develop robust partnerships with trusted content providers is a losing proposition for travel companies, regardless of their position in the industry.

The TSA is likely doing a better job identifying firearms at a time when more and more irresponsible gun owners are either purposefully or mistakenly attempting to smuggle them onboard.

Government employees expensing ridesharing services is a huge win for Uber and Lyft. But if the government itself supports the use of transportation networking companies for its workers, what are the possible chances of them regulating the industry in the future?