Business Travel News

The company still hasn't recovered from the slump in business travel post-recession, and with the macro picture on the sector changing fast with rise of digital, divesting, at least part of it, is the right move.

The frequency of and attendance at international business meetings will continue to grow thanks to companies' renewed confidence in an improving economy. But the meeting market is moving from Europe towards Asia meaning that the degree of growth for individual cities depends on their location.

American Airlines has a lot on its plate these days, and it's a huge company. An internal team focused on startups helps the airline earn goodwill among entrepreneurs, and the team can put startups in touch with the right people at the airline who can lend a hand.

Market forces eventually will have to force improvements in regional airlines' pilot wages. And mainline airline partners are going to have to kick in some money for pilot training, and ensure that lowly paid regional pilots will find an easier path to the big payday at major airlines.

The list, even though one-company specific, shows the meetings and conventions industry is coming out of recession as the broader economy improves. Cities with airports near city centers are doing a lot better.

Private company Sabre must be taking a financial beating behind the scenes as CEO Gilliland's exit was carried out in a very clumsy manner. Is there trouble in IPO land with owners TPG and Silver Lake getting very impatient about their own exits?

Officials from American Airlines and US Airways may have blundered big-time when they publicly stated that their respective airlines could indeed operate independently. This deal looked so bad from an anti-competition perspective that even the attorneys general from Texas and Arizona, where AA and US Air are headquartered, respectively, joined the suit.

American Express, other mega travel agencies and their corporate clients aren't going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle with badges and leader boards. There is a lot of turf-protection going on here.

There has been a lot of skepticism about whether Virgin America could turn itself into a profitable airline. It still faces tremendous competition and big-time challenges, but today's earnings announcement was a hopeful sign for an airline that a lot of people feel very good about.

Marriott and JetBlue have admitted that there were hack attempts; Expedia is reporting more credit card fraud, and HomeAway has been coping with an epidemic of phishing incidents. The state of online security and privacy is getting very dicey.