<B>E-Booking Gaining Ground</B>
For a variety of reasons, none more important than the weakened economy, online corporate travel finally has begun to show some serious traction over the past few months.
"We've now turned the corner on online travel and are seeing adoption ramp up quickly this year," said Ed Gilligan, group president of global corporate services for American Express in a speech at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Tampa, Fla., last month.
Gilligan said American Express learned in rolling out the AXI product it developed with Microsoft that corporate online travel "is a bigger challenge than we expected," but "five years later, it's starting to ramp up."
Gilligan said a "best in class" rollout should be moving 70 percent of all airline tickets online, with 70 percent of those fully automated in a fulfillment center. Companies "at it for a year or two" likely are seeing 15 percent to 20 percent penetration, he said, and "within 12 months you really should be at 20 percent to 25 percent."
Dallas-based TRX Inc. chief technology officer Steve Reynolds agreed that adoption is beginning to take off: "Normal growth is about 10 percent," he said. "So far this year, we're seeing 25 percent increases month to month."
CEO of Expedia Rich Barton last month at the PhoCus Wright investor's conference in New York said corporate travel just now is hitting an inflection point.
Sabre revealed that compressed corporate travel budgets in the first quarter drove five of GetThere's top 10 corporate clients to implement some sort of mandate to use the system. The GetThere unit enjoyed more than 100 percent growth in transactions as the portion of its customers' bookings made online grew to 9.1 percent, from 8 percent, in the December quarter. In last year's first quarter, that figure was about 3 percent, said William Hannigan, Sabre chairman, president and CEO. During 1Q, GetThere also added two of the top 10 largest corporate travel accounts, Ernst & Young and Lockheed Martin.
Even at a faster rate of increase, however, online booking's penetration industrywide still is about 5 percent, according to several large travel management company sources.