Business Travel News

Everyone is talking about experiential travel these days. But Tourism Australia is upping the ante, using experiences to drive a premium strategy aimed at attracting more affluent visitors.

On one hand, Delta's frequent flyers have a less-effective loyalty program. But on the other, they're flying a great airline.

Corporate travel managers want to learn and improve what they do. It can be hard to take the risk of trying something new that doesn't work out, though, particularly when cost savings alone can seem like success.

AccorHotels has made quite a shift upmarket in the last couple of years and it's unlikely the acquisition of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts will be the end of its dealmaking exploits.

CEO Sean Menke has gained breathing room to provide positive surprises. Getting cloud-based distribution and operations software right is hard. So the company is relying on concepts from top-tier management consulting firms as guidance.

It blows my mind that corporate travel executives say the same exact thing at this conference every year. It's like Groundhog Day with more suits and fewer laughs. Everyone wants to be one step ahead, but where is the incentive to actually take that step?

Marriott Rewards and Southwest Rapid Rewards are still dominating the Freddie awards in North America, as they did last year. In Europe, though, it was Aeroflot and Accor, while Virgin Australia took top honors in Asia/Oceania.

The growing consumerization of business travel is pushing more employees to book outside company policy. Expedia Affiliate Network’s new report, which examines the impact of this trend on travel management companies, suggests that improving booking choices and offering better tools will help boost employee compliance.

Beyond the Uber and Lyft drama here, the deeper trend seems to be companies and travel managers allowing business travelers to make their own choices about which ground transportation option they prefer. This represents a major change from how things used to be, and it is good news for the industry.

Many travel agents will have the benefit of selling a wider variety of packages from one distribution channel because of this deal, but will this industry giant really want to give travel agents, and their clients, the best rates if agents don't have anywhere else to turn? Time will tell.