Skift Travel News Blog

Travelport is planning to sell its Hotelzon division to corporate travel agency startup TripStax, which was officially launched earlier this year — by two former execs at Travelport.

Hotelzon claims to offer 1.5 million properties from multiple content sources that include Booking.com and Expedia, and says it has 370,000 users, including travel agencies, corporations and event management companies.

It was established in 1972, but has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Travelport since 2014.

TripStax signed the agreement to acquire Hotelzon as of Dec. 1 2022. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but TripStax said the agreement establishes a “long-term strategic relationship between TripStax and Travelport whereby Hotelzon will continue to generate hotel bookings on Travelport+.”

Travelport has been streamlining its technology since it announced Travelport+ in April last year.

Skift first revealed the development of TripStax as a spin-off from corporate travel agency ATPI in July 2021. TripStax’s investors include Intermediate Capital Group, which is one of ATPI Group’s owners. ATPI also made a significant investment, with ATPI CEO Ian Sinderson joining TripStax as a director.

Jack Ramsey, CEO of TripStax, was previously global sales director at Hotelzon.

The Unbundling Trend

TripStax said the acquisition will boost its technology offering of “connected proprietary business travel modules with a fully integrated hotel booking tool for agencies and corporates direct.”

The travel agency startup wants to stand out from the crowd by offering modules, such as analytics, content and traveler tracking, rather than a full service. Corporate travel agencies are under growing pressure to separate their bundled services as company travel managers look to cut costs and add flexibility.

Hotelzon will be integrated as an additional module.

It is the second acquisition made by TripStax, following its purchase of TapTrip earlier in the year. TapTrip also received investment from ATPI.

“Since its conception, TripStax has been on the look-out for acquisitions which add relevant and complementary tech to its already powerful stack of business travel management modules,” said Ramsay. “We are also excited to welcome the hugely experienced Hotelzon team to the TripStax business and plan to further invest in the team to strengthen existing customer and supplier relationships and realise the full potential of this joint opportunity.”

Momentum is building behind the Single African Air Transport Market, or SAATM, a flagship project designed to create a single unified air transport market in Africa, organized by the International Air Transport Association.

New routes should be easier to launch without the need for reciprocal services, and 17 African countries have now agreed to test the initiative, out of a total of 35 country signatories (which represents 80 percent of the existing aviation market in Africa.)

They are: Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Zambia, Niger and Gabon,

The 17 airlines will now open their air transport markets to each other as part of a new “SAATM Project Implementation Pilot.” According to reports, Kenya Airways will target corporate travel in a new Ghana-Senegal route, starting December 11.

The pilot routes come as more steps are being taken to create a new continental airline following a pact between South African Airways and Kenya Airways. Earlier this month a long-term business proposal was struck, which includes migration policies and trading privileges.

The air transport plan could eventually generate $4.2 billion in additional gross domestic product), 600,000 new jobs, a 27 percent reduction in fares and make a contribution to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, according to reports. For example, currently some routes between neigboring African countries involve connecting flights to nearby major international hubs.

The Single African Air Transport Market was established in 2018, and is considered as a step towards the full liberalization of the continent’s air transport market.

American Express Global Business Travel has partnered with Emirates Group-owned dnata to offer its global clients more local expertise in the Middle East region.

The agency has signed a “preferred travel partner agreement” with Dubai-based dnata Travel Management. It will provide full end-to-end travel and meetings management services to Amex GBT’s customers, the company said.

Dnata Travel Management is part of the dnata Travel Group, which is the travel division of dnata, a global air and travel services provider. Amex GBT, and other travel agencies, often establish these types of partnerships with “local travel partners” in countries where they do not have a proprietary operation.

The pair also have some history, as dnata acquired a 23 percent stake in corporate travel agency Hogg Robinson Group in 2008, which was bought by Amex GBT a decade later. Alongside investment firm Boron it was a significant minority shareholder at the time.

The tie-up comes as the Middle East embarks on a number of large scale projects, including Saudi Arabia’s Neom project. The country is eying a 100 million-visitor target per year by 2030. “Saudi has huge ambitions,” the tourism authority’s chief technology officer Choon Yang Quek said during Skift Global Forum earlier this year.

“We look forward to working with Amex GBT and its clients as the region sees strong growth in corporate travel, fuelled by mega-projects and companies that are seeking to expand,” said Rashid Al Awadhi, senior vice president – dnata Travel Group, Middle East and India.

Adnan Kazim, chief commercial officer at Emirates Airline, will be speaking at Skift Global Forum East in Dubai, which takes place December 13-15.

Rising airfares and travel costs are prompting legal professionals involved in dispute resolutions to return to video conferencing.

That’s according to a National Law Review article, which has highlighted how virtual proceedings are coming back after being used during the pandemic. International arbitration centers and courts became comfortable with the virtual format during lockdowns, with protocols developed and vetted, the article said.

“Virtual hearings save money (and they’re here to stay,)” argues IMS Consulting & Expert Services, in its opinion piece titled “Global Dispute Resolution: The Future of Virtual Legal Proceedings Is Shaped by Soaring Travel Costs.”

“International travel is expensive, and the virtual option means that it is no longer necessary to count travel as a ‘cost of doing business’ when pursuing an international dispute,” it said.

It’s a compelling cost saver for all parties, it argues — and the consultancy says it’s run the numbers.

International Business Travel Expenses & Travel Time to London for One Legal Proceeding

Source: National Law Review

It’s compared costs for in-person attendance, with the example of a business travel cost profile for an international arbitration hearing taking place in London and involving three U.S. attorneys, two Paris attorneys, two local witnesses, and three litigation support personnel.

The average business trip to London is 5.8 days, during which these travelers will require accommodations for 5 nights, food for 6 days, and ground transportation for 6 days.

“The cost of travel time can be as much or more than the cost of flights to attend an international arbitration or other legal hearing,” the articles states. “Spending many hours traveling to and returning from the various steps of an international proceeding is not only an expense for a client, but productivity is also lost for the legal professionals involved.”

How many other industries will be considering similar number-crunching exercises?

If you’d thought Silicon Valley’s TripActions was running out of steam as we head towards the year’s end, after its acquisitions and extensive fundraising, think again.

On Tuesday the corp travel startup announced its fourth acquisition in 18 months, buying Spain’s Atlanta Events & Corporate Travel Consultants.

The rationale, according to the company, is because of an increase in demand for conferences, on-sites and offsites.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The purchase was made by TripActions’ premium-travel brand, Reed & Mackay, which it itself bought back in 2021. Atlanta was also a long-standing partner of Reed & Mackay.

Reed & Mackay’s meetings and events division’s employee base has grown fivefold, year-over-year, the company added.

This acquisition fills a gap in Europe, after it previously bought Comtravo in Germany and Resia in Sweden.

Atlanta has offices in Andalucia, Barcelona and Madrid, and all 70 employees will transfer over.

SAP, the parent company of the Concur suite of tools for managing travel expenses, said on Tuesday the company’s unit was recovering after the pandemic shock.

“Concur is actually recovering very nicely,” said Luka Mucic, chief financial officer for the German software giant. “They are only representing this quarter a 1 percent drag on the growth [in SAP’s Cloud Choice Profit (CCP) unit of cloud businesses].”

“Actually on the transactional revenue side, they are already showing very high growth in the high double digits,” Mucic said. “So that business will definitely exceed its pre-pandemic state next year, as we had projected.”

SAP cited increased use of Concur by existing clients. For example, Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. has used SAP Concur Solutions for over 15 years. But in the third quarter, it expanded its partnership because of increased student, faculty, and administrator travel.

“Our intelligence spend and business network is benefiting from a return to business travel combined with the increased focus on managing costs with cloud revenue growth in the mid-teens,” said Christian Klein, CEO of SAP.

As Skift recently reported, SAP Concur Travel is getting its first overhaul in more than 15 years. Earlier this week G2, a leading software rating service, named Concur as a market leader in its reviews-based ranking for travel expense management.

United Airlines saw an increase in corporate travel bookings after Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer in the U.S.

“We did see in September another several points tick up in corporate travel buying,” United Vice President of Sales Strategy & Effectiveness Glenn Hollister said at the ATPCO Elevate conference in Arlington, Va., Tuesday. Those “several points” raised corporate bookings to more than 70 percent recovered from the pandemic, he added.

Asked about the outlook for the rest of 2022, Hollister said United sees no change in corporate booking activity, which continues to gradually improve.

Also speaking at the ATPCO event, Global Business Travel Association CEO Suzanne Neufang said the organization forecasts corporate travel buying globally to recover to roughly 65 percent of 2019 levels, or a little less than $1 trillion, by the end of the year. GBTA does not expect a full recovery until 2026.

A big final step in the corporate travel recovery for United, and many other airlines, is the reopening of Asia. United was the largest U.S. airline to the region before the pandemic and, until large markets like China fully reopen, will face challenges fully recovering to 2019 corporate travel revenues.

United will provide an updated outlook when it reports its third quarter results on October 19.

More than nine months after revealing its ambitions to list on the New York Stock Exchange, at a $1.2 billion valuation, self-styled lifestyle and experiential hotel company Selina has set a date to go public, by merging with BOA Acquisition Corp — a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The pair announced Monday that the registration statement filed in December last year was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 30. It originally planned to go public in the first half.

Now, if the merger partner’s shareholders approve the deal at a special meeting Oct. 21, and other conditions are satisfied, Selina’s common stock would start trading under the symbol “SLNA” following the closing.

Selina expects to raise $54 million in PIPE (private investment in public equity) proceeds, up to $231 million in cash from BOA’s trust account and $118 million from subscriptions to the $147.5 million principal amount of 6% senior unsecured convertible notes due 2026.

The money raised will be used to fund operations and continue its plans to achieve profitability.

Selina’s been fairly active in the past few months, with new partnerships including freelancer platform Fiverr and a party thrown for potential investors just weeks ago.

In the first half of the year it has opened 3,368 bed spaces within 13 properties in Greece, Australia, Portugal, Panama, the U.S, Israel and new location Morocco.

It also signed 7,374 bed spaces within 17 new properties and expansions across Australia, the U.S., Greece, Mexico, Portugal, Panama and Israel. This brings the total count at the end of the first half to 163 open and secured locations in 25 countries.

“We continue the positive momentum to a record year ahead; we keep being true to our mission by connecting our brand to local guests, remote workers, and digital nomads. In the first half of this year, we increased our total revenue by 142 percent and occupancy by 60 percent compared to the same period in 2021,” said Rafael Museri, co-founder and CEO of Selina, which mainly targets millennial and Gen Z travelers.

Selina was founded in 2014.

In a further sign of its push into business travel, Sonder has added Michelle Frymire, the former CEO of corporate travel agency CWT, to its board of directors.

The next-generation hospitality company this month also announced it has a chain code, SS, in the Sabre and Amadeus global distribution systems, and earlier this year expanded its sales team to offer corporations negotiated rates and attract groups.

However, months after that expansion it restructured its operations, cutting 21 percent of corporate roles and seven percent of frontline roles, including its chief technology officer.

Frymire has experience on this front too, as during her 12 months at CWT she oversaw its financial restructuring and eventual exit from bankruptcy.

Manon Brouillette, executive vice president and CEO of Verizon Consumer Group, is stepping down from Sonder’s board to focus on her current job at Verizon, the company said.

Sonder has been trying to up its footprint in corporate travel, announced that it now has a chain code, SS, in the Sabre and Amadeus global distribution systems.

When travel agents are looking to book corporate clients in Sonder properties, having that chain code makes it easier for them to search and find them, Sonder said Wednesday.

Sonder said it obtained the chain code through a partnership with RateGain, which uses a connectivity switch solution to process electronic hotel bookings.

Sonder, a property manager of short-term rentals and hotels, said in its most recent earnings call last month that it had nearly 400 corporate accounts, up from around 250 at the end of March.