The business travel industry in 2019 featured big deals, some structural change, a bit of innovation and perhaps a growing sense of social responsibility. Ring in 2020 by taking a look back at the most popular stories on this site of 2019, leaving aside BTN's popular annual surveys, and based on Google Analytics page-view data.
1. App Analysis: Mega Travel Management Company Apps
BTN's side-by-side-by-side graphical look at the functionalities and capabilities of the apps offered by American Express Global Business Travel, BCD Travel and CWT, published in June, was the most-viewed BTN offering of the year, illustrating the continued strong interest in travel management apps and the differences among them. Read more
2. Moving Human Trafficking Awareness Beyond the Travel Industry's Front Lines
This long look at human trafficking, one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world and one inextricably linked to the travel industry, was the most-read BTN news story of 2019, illustrating the industry's interest in the topic. This piece touches on steps industry suppliers—including airline and hotel companies, which are used by traffickers—have taken to address the issue, and includes a survey of BTN's research board on their attitudes toward the topic. Read more
3. Enterprise Holdings Will Acquire Deem
There have been several big deals in the car rental industry in the past decade, but none quite like this one. Enterprise Holdings in January 2019 acquired corporate travel technology platform Deem, and now maintains it as an autonomous operation. Deem since has decided to sunset its in-house expense platform, which would enable it to focus on transport-related initiatives, such as deeper integration with the ride-hailing industry. Read more
4. How Hotel Rates Will Change in 2020, and Why
BTN charted American Express Global Business Travel's projections for 2020 hotel rates in select cities throughout the world as laid out in the travel management company's Hotel Monitor 2020 report. Read more and see the charts
5. Big Changes Loom for Payments in Europe
Designed to stem electronic payment fraud across the European Economic Area—made up of EU member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway—new card security requirements, scheduled to be implemented in September 2019, threatened to sow corporate travel chaos. However, jurisdictions throughout Europe since extended that deadline, averting complications, for now. Read more
6. Delta Pulls Content Off TripActions
Delta Air Lines in January 2019 pulled its content off the TripActions platform, saying the platform was not meeting the carrier's display requirements, though it would return the following month when TripActions rolled out a new flight booking tool that was among the first to use ATPCO's Next Generation Storefront standards. Delta's NGS recruitment wouldn't stop at TripActions, though. Read more
7. Big Changes at Concur
Travel tech giant SAP Concur in May announced several key personnel and structural changes, topped by the elevation of chief revenue officer and chief service officer Jim Lucier to company president, and the merging of its product and technology teams into one group led by chief technology officer Michael Weingartner. Read more
8. BCD Travel Unveils New Global Hotels Division
BTN in June interviewed BCD Travel SVP of hotel solutions April Bridgeman about the travel management company's new global hotel division and Stay by BCD Travel branded service for managing hotel programs. Read more
9. BTN's 2019 Travel Manager of the Year: ZS Associates' Suzanne Boyan
Suzanne Boyan's bold experiment to shift her company's program toward a model that eschews the travel management company and global distribution system paradigm in favor of direct connections with suppliers, bolstered by third-party specialists—all tied together by data aggregation from Traxo—earned her BTN's annual honor of Travel Manager of the Year. Read more
10. Air and Hotel Rate Outlook for 2020, Region by Region
Travel management company CWT's 2020 Global Travel Forecast projected global hotel rates and airfares would rise modestly in 2020 year over year. Read more
Bonus: 11. Concur's NDC Pilot an End Run Around GDSs—for Now
News that SAP Concur was piloting an initiative to give its corporate travel buyer customers direct access to New Distribution Capability content, bypassing the global distribution system channel entirely, rounds out this look at 2019. Read more
RELATED: BTN's 10 Most-Read Stories of 2018