There's something to be said about knowing when to be the operator behind the scenes—especially in the corporate travel industry when innovators are pushing boundaries. Innovators, especially lately, want to focus on their core differentiators and be the best at it. If they need to work within a legacy system or overlay innovation on top of existing mechanisms, they don't want to get distracted. What they need are partners to ensure they can deliver on their promises in the bigger picture. This year, the partner of choice for three major innovators was Altour under the leadership of president Gabe Rizzi.
Altour has provided a fulfillment spine for two emerging guest travel platforms this year: Juno, whose cofounder Devon Tivona is a 2025 BTN Most Influential, and EmPath founder and former Google travel manager Greg Wilczek. The Blockskye and Kayak Enterprise partnership, another innovator whose client Deloitte made this year's Most Influential, also tapped Altour this year to expand its geographic footprint to serve multinational clients.
Blockskye, with the Kayak Enterprise booking tool, put its services on the map by winning two of the largest business travel programs in the world, PwC and Deloitte. But, for now, it's mainly serving the U.S.-based firms for both consulting companies. Altour, which is a division of Internova Travel Group, has joined Blockskye and Kayak as a third player that helps the other two put the rest of the world in play via its agency partners. The network will provide local content, ticketing and settlement to supplement the standing partners’ direct connections.
While some TMC leaders might look at such behind-the-scenes partnerships as “drudge work," Rizzi scoffs at such a notion and shrewdly looks at the opportunity to grow Altour's business without a massive investment.
Speaking to BTN earlier this year, he said, "We happily take on that work, and our partners are excited to do that." About the Blockskye/Kayak partnership, specifically, he added, "We become more relevant to a completely different customer set, which we never were before. And we didn't have to stand up a whole bunch of infrastructure to do that. … It's not like Altour is completely changing direction; it's just increasing its addressable market."