Our archive coverage of BTN’s 40 years as the leading
publication and news outlet of the business travel industry comes to a close
with this article. You will realize—and many of you probably already have come
to understand this from your own recent experiences—that we are ending this
series on the cusp of a possible new beginning for business travel management.
The pieces are in place; it’s the dynamics that are hard to pin down at the
moment.
Some of the major change drivers for 2023 were set in motion
in late 2022. Namely, the advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and just two weeks later
American Airline’s announcement that it would programmatically remove up to 40
percent of its content from EDIFACT channels (read: traditional GDS) as of
April 1, 2023.
Before we dive into those developments, however, let’s take
a look at business travel volume trajectories. Here’s an excerpt from BTN’s Corporate
Travel 100 from 2023 that outlines industry expectations:
Among the firms that participated in BTN’s survey 96
percent saw business travel rebound in 2022 from prior-year levels, with a
number of companies reporting eight times their travel spend from 2021, the
absolute nadir for the industry during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many companies
easily quadrupled their 2021 spend. Going into 2023, 92 percent of companies
that reported their numbers to BTN expect to clock in additional business
travel growth. A handful of these projected to double or triple their 2022
volume.
That was great news for a corporate travel industry that previously
talked a lot about large enterprises as the “laggards” in the overall travel
recovery—dragging behind the surge of pent-up leisure travel and a robust wave
of travel from small and midsize companies that, according to the supplier set,
had fully recovered and often surpassed their pre-Covid travel spending. And
while recovery was not yet “whole” for large corporates, the industry consensus
was that they had reached a level at which comparisons to 2019 were no longer
useful. Instead, the industry should simply focus on growth.
But the dynamics of the post-Covid business travel space were
changing. The industry overall head learned that large corporate accounts
weren’t the only game in town. Even mega intermediaries like American Express
Global Business Travel had restructured their businesses around the opportunity
for new revenue streams in the SME space. Travel suppliers, too, were looking
at how to attract the SME market, often to direct booking programs.
That was a big part of American Airlines’ push for direct
bookings and fewer bona fide corporate contracts—and the carrier gutted their
sales team to prove it. Qantas at the end of the year made a big push into the
SME market with a self-service platform play built on Spotnana technology that
allowed customers not only to book Qantas flights but also hotel and car rental,
set simple policy rules and get program reporting—similar to what a TMC would provide,
but without the service layer. Marriott, which announced it was working on an
SME program rollout in the summer of 2023, delivered in early 2024 a program very
similar in scope to the Qantas one. Plus, the hotel giant sweetened its direct-booking
platform with enhanced loyalty offers.
In short, experimentation was in the air in 2023.
AA’s NDC Gambit
Experimentation—especially on a larger scale—doesn’t always
sit will within delicately balanced managed travel models. AA’s distribution strategy
removed 40 percent of the airline’s content from EDIFACT channels and left a vast
number of TMC partners and corporate customers in limbo with AA content as a
result. The airline had been low on detail in the lead-up to its April 1 deadline;
TMCs had lots of unanswered questions and AA didn’t have a lot of solid answers—even
after the go-date passed.
After AA’s announcement in December 2022 and through the
first quarter of 2023, industry uncertainty reached a fever pitch of
“will-they, won’t-they” on whether AA would make the drastic changes they
outlined to their buyers and TMC partners. Though the airline has backtracked
now, then-distribution leader Vasu Raja powered through on the airlines’
unpopular promises.
Ultimately, AA restructured (and downsized) its corporate
sales teams and agreement structures. The carrier would also require direct
bookings through the AA business loyalty program or booking through an
ill-defined “preferred agency,” if corporate clients wanted their travelers to bank
any loyalty points. In the end, a “preferred agency” was never fully defined or
enforced. Even so, some corporate programs abandoned their partnerships as it
was too difficult for agencies to service them. Some continued to book AA’s
non-NDC fares, but often at higher prices. Many TMCs resorted to good-old-fashioned
human agent work to streamline those bookings, but the economics behind using their
most expensive service channels for everyday bookings was dicey for agencies.
According to a number of buyer and TMC reports, the bookaway from American was
swift and decisive.
There were a handful of TMCs, however, that were sitting
pretty with direct connect strategies already established for AA’s new content rails.
Navan, Spotnana and a smaller player called AmTrav were among those. AmTrav CEO
Jeff Klee became a minor industry celebrity in the wake of AA’s distribution
changes for his optimistic outlook on direct connect NDC. AmTrav also
functioned as a bellwether for the airline’s strategy as the small and midsize
program specialist TMC assiduously tracked AA’s fare differentials it was
seeing between NDC and EDIFACT channels and the wider industry was hungry for
that kind of transparency. (AmTrav was acquired by startup unicorn TravelPerk
in 2024—and continues its same NDC strategy for a number of airlines, not just
American.)
While AA’s bold experiment ultimately failed its first
iteration (and its strategic leader fired in the wake of lackluster earnings
reports come Spring 2024), the industry learned that distribution moves that seek
airline savings but also look to maximize retailing and personalization to fit
modern expectations should come to be expected. AA hasn’t abandoned its efforts
to drive NDC bookings. After an apology tour from senior leadership, the
carrier maintains its NDC efforts, has tightened up the technologies and APIs to
make it more functional and is now more partnership-oriented with TMCs. The larger
industry, however, has realized more airlines (think: United) could follow AA’s
lead at any time—and they have.
What Happened to Generative AI in 2023?
In the wake of 2023’s AA distribution hubbub,
precious few stories or even substantial announcements about managed travel and
artificial intelligence broke through the NDC noise. It’s almost certain that NDC
delayed TMC attention toward the new technology as other industries moved
quickly.
Navan, however, was hot on the opportunity. The
digital-first TMC enhanced its Ava chatbot in February 2023 with responsive
generative AI that enabled travel recommendations and bookings among other
capabilities.
Amadeus Cytric announced in the fourth quarter it was
working on a generative AI chatbot as part of Cytric Easy. It partnered with
some big names—Microsoft and Accenture—to test it and roll it out via Microsoft
Teams. FCM
was among the first legacy travel management companies to embrace the idea of a
dedicated AI-oriented innovation team. That happened in December 2023 when the
TMC tapped Adrian Lopez a co-founder of FCM’s original Sam chatbot (by now
discontinued) to lead that new group. Slightly more than a year later, the team
re-launched Sam with new and improved AI working behind the scenes.
Amex
GBT created a similar team in February 2024. Other TMCs—World Travel, for
one—by 2024 would dive more deeply into the AI game, and many more product and
service improvements would be announced in 2024 and 2025, particularly after AA
backed way off its initial NDC strategy.
Concur was a conspicuous absence for generative AI
innovation in 2023. The hands-down dominant leader in travel and expense technology
didn’t comment on plans to have an AI booking agent until July 2025—yes, this
year. The platform that acquired Cliqbook in the early 2000s to outplay so many
expense-only innovators in 2023 felt like it was fossilizing quickly in its travel
user experience, especially when compared to startup booking technologies
coming into the market.
But Concur hadn’t been sitting on its laurels. The travel booking
platform rebuild the provider had promised in 2020 came to fruition in 2023.
Concur T2 began rolling out to the U.S. in the fall and the new platform included
the ability to digest and display NDC content—a major concern for all users by
mid-2023.
Additionally, Concur remained in 2023 among the scarce booking
tools actually viable for global programs. It also, however, remained
predicated on in-market instances rather than on a newer vision of travel
management as exhibited by providers like Spotnana that would bring corporate
clients onto a single instance. This may yet turn out to be a competitive
disadvantage for Concur as a new wave of technology rearchitects the
fundamental value and revenue streams of traditional players.
Of course, Steve Singh, the founder of Concur who left the
company in 2017, three years after its acquisition by SAP, had by that time
become a major investor in, executive chairman and CEO of Spotnana. Spotnana partnered
with what was increasingly a financially strapped CWT to pilot its technology
offerings with large clients like Meta and Walmart. By April 2024, Singh and a
group of investors would also buy midmarket TMC Direct Travel just as CWT
announced it would be acquired by Amex GBT.
Re-architecting Corporate Travel Platforms
A quick analysis might conclude that AA’s 2023 NDC strategy drove
the managed travel industry’s most fundamental change in decades. Another analysis
might conclud the advent of generative artificial intelligence, though off to a
slow start in managed travel, would be it’s biggest change agent. Both of those
are possibly true.
I would suggest, however, a different event kickstarted a
new evolution of business travel by showing the market that tools were
available to short circuit the traditional GDS-Travel Agency-Booking Tool rubric
that had the industry in trapped in a three-way struggle for 40 years, with the
constant question of “Who is the Customer?”
Startups for years had predicated their innovations on
machine learning and AI. Precious few, however, set out to change the
fundamental mechanisms or platforms around which traditional corporate travel
programs were built. If they had—it would be argued by many startups—that the
dominant agencies and existing technology players within corporate travel would
have had keen interest in either blocking entry to the industry or in acquiring
them and shutting them down (see Hipmunk’s demise under Concur as just one
example).
It would take a big player to come to market with something
new—and they did in 2023. But it wasn’t some instantaneous innovation, it had
been brewing for years. Even since before the pandemic, and its emergence in
the marketplace brought back the promise of an older tech buzzword: blockchain.
Danielle Cavnor and Eric Gray, both senior procurement
managers at PwC U.S., began with a direct booking and direct pay pilot in 2018.
The objective, supported by United Airlines, blockchain travel startup
BlockSkye and, at the time, ARC (which later fell out of the fold), was to
establish direct booking for travelers so they could access loyalty inclusions
and other for-purchase amenities and at the same time reduce global
distribution fees for the airline.
BlockSkye glued the pieces together on a blockchain-powered
ledger to track the booking and related charges, the latter of which was
settled directly with the airline on a defined cycle, cutting out credit card
transaction fees.
The pilot outlined a workable business case for booking and
paying airlines directly, but PwC didn’t want to send travelers to airline dot-coms
for bookings. To forward a more formal effort, Cavnor and Gray still would need
a TMC and corporate booking tool willing to play in a direct-connect and
direct-pay space—and a broad slate of travel partners willing to experiment
along the way.
When PWC broached the topic with a number of established
names, vanishing few were game. So the consulting firm went off the grid,
enlisting BlockSkye to stand up a blockchain-supported agency (also supported
by midmarket TMC Gant that had made some prescient tech investments). The
consulting firm changed GDS providers to Amadeus and worked with business
travel booking newcomer (but leisure search master) Kayak.com to pull multiple
content sources and channel strategies into a single forward-facing business
travel interface.
Kayak Enterprise, predicated on the relationship with
BlockSkye, debuted in August 2023 as an extension of the metasearch company’s
work with PwC. BlockSkye’s ledger tracks all touches to every reservation and
makes it serviceable by the TMC or the airline—if the airline is directly
connected. If not, it takes the booking via a traditional GDS but still tracks
it in a blockchain ledger.
To optimize performance within the PwC U.S. program, travel suppliers
needed to take the leap. The firm’s sourcing strategy preferenced suppliers in
the booking tool according to the value of their negotiated deals combined with
how fully each supplier participates in PwC’s direct connect strategy. The more
strategically suppliers participate, the more visible they became to PwC’s
65,000 U.S.-based travelers and the more they could benefit in terms of
distribution and payment savings. PwC U.S. worked out a share in those savings.
Innovation pushed by a consulting firm isn’t often kept within
its own walls. While PWC wasn’t willing on 2023 to talk with BTN about plans to
promote and sell the model to clients, it was clearly the end game of the firm’s
considerable investment. A page on the PWC’s hospitality
practice website now reads, “What began as a collaboration with PwC, KAYAK
and Blockskye to reimagine business travel at our own organization quickly
became a solution that could help other organizations.”
Deloitte, another consulting firm with U.S.-originating air
spend of more than $300 million annually, shifted its U.S.
and Israel business to BlockSkye and Kayak Enterprise in 2025. The direct
connect NDC APIs through Kayak combined with the blockchain ledger that unites
data and allows servicing from all participants in the chain was likely a
driver for the change, according to BTN reporting. It was a major blow to
legacy provider BCD which had served the large Deloitte program for years (it
still serves a number of markets). BlockSkye claimed in June it had too many clients
in implementation to take on any others.
BlockSkye and Kayak aren’t the only players looking to shift
the market and travel management models. Steve Singh’s investment in Spotnana combined
with payment provider Center and the purchase of Direct Travel (with partners)
in 2024 has tantalized the industry—though the payment piece has now been sold
to American Express. And don’t count out the supplier strategies that are
breaking off pieces of the SME market to come through direct channels.
How legacy players will respond remains to be seen. Amex GBT
has now completed its acquisition of financially strapped mega-TMC CWT. By 2023
the latter had continued to refinance and reformulate in a big to save itself.
Whether size will rule the day in a changing industry remains to be seen. There’s
speculation in the industry that another major move may be coming from the
legacy players in the coming weeks. Whether it will drive innovation or form a
phalanx around legacy models only time will tell.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
Editor’s note:
We’ve come to the end of Business Travel News’ 40-year
article archive. It’s been a fascinating journey through business travel
history for me. I hope it has been for BTN readers as well—both now and in the
future.
When I originally planned this trip through BTN’s history, I
had no intention of writing each archive piece myself. I had grander—and in
some ways easier—plans to reach out to a cross-section of industry players to
get their takes on historic events. As I got deeper into the stories and
industry dynamics, however, it became increasingly clear that a close read of
BTN’s journalism revealed an arc of business travel industry history that would
not necessarily come into focus if addressed through fragmented lenses.
That is a testament to BTN’s editorial excellence and to the
hard-working editors who have contributed to and led this news publication and
online outlet for more than 40 years now.
I have no doubt, however, there were many topics that could
have benefitted from an additional or entirely different voice than my own. And
I invite anyone reading through these pieces now to offer their insights by
emailing me at [email protected].
I would be delighted to append, correct or enhance these articles on an ongoing
basis—or incorporate a comments section.