It may surprise industry outsiders to learn that frontline travel agents remain a vital force in corporate travel. They weren't wiped out by the Internet. They weren't erased by self-booking tools. And, no, artificial intelligence and bots aren't taking over anytime soon.
In a new research report, The Beat surveyed hundreds of travel counselors who work each day on the travel management company frontlines. Join us for an hour-long webinar to review the findings and discuss with industry experts:
Who is the frontline counselor?
How is their role evolving?
What challenges do they face in their jobs?
What technologies do they use?
How are TMCs attracting the next generation of agents?
Business dining is one of the largest travel spend categories – at $77 billion annually; yet, not much has been done to understand business diners and how they spend corporate dollars. Dinova conducted a joint research study to help you understand the dining habits and preferences of business travelers to provide a more positive travel experience today and shape effective policies for the future. Hear the survey highlights with comments from a corporate buyer in this 45-minute BTN Group "In the Know" webinar, with content sponsored and developed by Dinova.
Small meetings are the invisible giant: two-thirds of all corporate event spend and growing. But, as we all know, small meetings are rarely simple and often can include many complexities around adherence to policy, compliant contracting, and attendee management. There are new technologies and approaches, but what is the best way to get adoption, visibility, and savings?
Hear from the meetings and events leadership at Anthem in this free BTN Group “In the Know” webinar developed by Bizly. Learn how to create an effective policy for small meetings, ensure companywide adoption, and deliver ROI. Gain a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges around small meetings, and learn how to customize a great program at your company.
As more companies expand the footprint of managed travel programs to new countries and regions—or refine existing initiatives--what policies, technology, communication strategies and practices should they consider?
Listen as travel management professionals share the latest trends and watch words on policies, local practices, technology and new developments during this 60-minute BTN Group thought-leadership webinar, sponsored by Travelport. Ask your own questions during the live Q&A.
Travel management in recent years has increasingly reported to procurement or finance to best control costs. However, as more companies consider business travel as a tactic to grow their businesses and navigate talent wars, travel management is more frequently working in tandem with human resources, sales and other teams to re-evaluate policies, practices, costs and perks of the job.
Join us for a discussion of the pros and cons of various reporting structures in this 60-minute BTN Group thought-leadership webinar, sponsored by Air Canada. Hear case studies from travel managers, perspectives from industry experts and ask your own questions during the live Q&A session.
Through application programming interfaces (APIs) and distributed ledger technologies, suppliers are evaluating ways to take advantage of efficiencies and cost reductions gained by disintermediating traditional financial institutions from the payment ecosystem. But what are the benefits and potential drawbacks of direct payments from buyers to suppliers via such emerging technologies?
Register now for this BTN Group “In the Know” webinar, sponsored and developed by UATP, to learn about the heightened interest in disintermediation that is driving the rapid deployment of technologies such as blockchain. The panel will begin with an explanation of how these technologies have the potential to revolutionize travel procurement with a focus on payments.
Along with New Distribution Capability, the airline industry is working to modernize air shopping with an initiative called One Order. A new era of airline retailing that combines a travelers’ personal data, payments and purchases on a single order is designed to replace the rigid booking, ticketing, delivery and accounting methods that travelers, travel managers and travel management companies find today. Instead of decoding, mixing and matching Passenger Name Records, Eticket and Electronic Miscellaneous Document designators, trip data will be combined into a single order record designed to enhance the traveler experience, reporting, duty of care, back office processes and more. How and when will this begin?
Register now for this BTN Group thought leadership webinar, sponsored by American Airlines, to learn the basics of One Order and questions you should be asking travel suppliers now to prepare.
Flight disruptions can wreak havoc on travelers, travel managers and their travel management companies. Delays and cancellations cost the airline industry billions of dollars each year and cost passengers, corporations, and TMCs even more due to missed sales, meetings, and other appointments, not to mention the rework and rescheduling. What can you do to minimize such inconveniences to travelers and your business?
Register now for this 45-minute BTN Group “In the Know” webinar, developed and sponsored by Lumo. Hear real-world stories about how flight delays, disruptions and cancellations affect managed travel programs, and most importantly, how savvy corporations are cutting their losses, educating travelers and minimizing the impact of irregular operations.
How will economic factors and supplier strategies affect business travel buyers for the rest of 2018 and into 2019? What pricing developments can travel program stakeholders anticipate for air fares and hotel rates? Prepare for 2019 by attending our Travel Industry Forecast webinar, developed and presented by BCD Travel. Hear the global and regional forecasts, along with recommendations for how best to optimize supplier negotiations for next year during this 60-minute webcast. And ask your own questions during the live Q&A.
Where are travel management companies investing in their businesses? How do they differentiate their products and services? When do they build, buy or partner to deliver client solutions?
In a recent research report, The Beat surveyed 30 travel management companies—from the largest of megas to smaller, domestic players, and everything in between—to answer these questions and untangle how TMCs today are investing in IT, personnel, technology and operations.
In this 60-minute webinar, sponsored by ARC, hear research findings along with trends in travel management technology from TMC experts. Ask your own questions of the panel during this live presentation and download a copy of The Beat Research Report.
As the annual transient hotel requests for proposals season kicks off, what do travel buyers really want from hotels? Do they value the traditional hotel RFP process? Is the pain of the RFP process worth the gain?
Register now to learn how leading travel managers are employing new strategies in their hotel sourcing game plans. During this 60-minute BTN Group thought-leadership webinar, sponsored by Cvent Hospitality Cloud, also hear how travel managers polled this summer view annual RFPs, dynamic pricing, multi-year deals and more.
What do travelers really want from their corporate travel departments, suppliers, travel management companies (TMCs) and technology?
Travel managers from some of the most demanding travel programs--think high-tech, younger travelers, ultimate road warriors--highlight how they’re transforming their programs and meeting or exceeding traveler expectations during this free 60-minute webinar, sponsored by Air Canada. How happy are travelers? Hear a preview of the latest findings from BTN's Traveler Happiness Index. Ask your own questions of the panel during the live presentation.
IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) is the poster-child for change in travel management. But how might it impact your managed travel program or the roles of key players in your program?
Hear from the IATA program lead for NDC and travel buyers at the heart of the project in this free BTN Group “In the Know” webinar developed by IATA. Learn what NDC is and isn’t. Gain a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges as the industry moves to a new distribution landscape.
That drip, drip, drip you hear as company travelers book air, hotel and other reservations outside your managed program may well be growing louder. Lured by loyalty points, discounted pricing or simply the ease of mobile bookings on familiar apps, travelers are increasingly incentivized to book outside of
preferred channels, your negotiated deals and most importantly, duty of care programs. While most corporations report air bookings through managed channels north of 80 percent, hotel program leakage of 50 percent or more is way too common, even in the best managed programs! With such holes, how can you track
travelers, spending and leverage data in negotiations?
Register now for this free, 60-minute BTN Group thought-leadership webinar, sponsored by Traxo, to hear the challenges, tactics, tricks and tools some companies are using to plug such holes in their programs.
How are small and midsize travel departments—with limited resources and time—using real-time data instead of standard, historical reporting to change traveler behaviors in their organizations? Hear how companies can secure robust data sets, build and execute cost savings initiatives and transform the data into actionable intelligence to drive business decisions for key stakeholders.
Register now for this free, 60-minute BTN Group thought-leadership webinar, sponsored by Travel Incorporated, to learn how leading business travel executives are using actionable data to enhance their managed travel program.
It's time to choose your own adventure with our Meetings Management Experts. Acquis Consulting's Shimon Avish, World Bank's Sabrina Capannola and ZS Associates Kimberly Meyer will engage on the meetings topics that matter to you most: the GDPR journey, commission reductions, refining the SMM value proposition, SMM savings estimates, measuring return on investment, attendee engagement strategies … these are just a sample of what you can bring to table.
Register now to attend, engage and learn!
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language recognition. Where does artificial intelligence fit into the managed travel practice? Business Travel News will bring together a panel of industry experts who are not only observing but also leading the market in emerging AI capabilities to talk about the current state of artificial intelligence for managed travel booking, service and reporting functions. We'll also talk about how AI stands to influence the buyer-supplier relationship and what the AI adoption trajectory may look like.
Attend BTN's Artificial Intelligence & Managed Travel webinar to find out how companies like yours may incorporate new AI capabilities to inform and enhance travel management strategies.
With the number of
small meetings on the rise, so too are challenges for companies to best manage
them. Companies can no longer afford to ignore small meetings as the overall
spend, sourcing challenges and risks have escalated. But how should they approach
small meetings management?
Learn the approaches
and rationale of various companies in this FREE, 60-minute BTN Group
thought-leadership webinar sponsored by Cvent. Hear what prompted the decisions
to finally tackle small meetings within their organizations, how companies have
approached it and the results.
Many travel managers struggle with low hotel attachment rates. Given all the work and effort that goes into negotiating a preferred hotel program, travelers booking around the program can be a source of major frustration. Using new technologies that can capture, parse, and push data for analysis, reining in direct bookings is more of a reality than ever before.
Hear real-world examples of hotel attachment solutions from ITW travel manager Cathy Sharpe, as well as detail on the data capture, cleaning, monitoring and reporting from Traxo and TRIPBAM during this BTN Group In the Know webinar, created with sponsor TRIPBAM. The pros and cons of direct bookings, as well as how to leverage new technology to increase control and visibility of your hotel program are also on the agenda.
The corporate travel industry is rapidly evolving with the expansion of on-demand ground transportation options, driven by innovations in technology, and new waves of Millennial travelers who have a differentiated set of expectations. Your travelers are most likely using ridesharing, but are your policies and partnerships allowing your travelers to benefit from streamlined expense, data and other integrations?
In this free, BTN Group "In The Know" webinar, created in partnership with sponsor Lyft Business, learn how integrating rideshare data with travel management company reporting is enabling employers to gain new insights into traveler trends and a more holistic picture of their travelers end-to-end trip experiences. Partnerships like those of Lyft, Deem and Flight Centre are allowing businesses to make strategic transportation decisions that provide optimized experiences for their people.
Meetings on your mind for 2018? You're not alone. In this webinar, BTN will bring three big meeting industry names to the table to talk about what's ahead for 2018. Whether it's pricing and revenue management, emerging technologies, program globalization or attendee experience, our panel will give educated answers to your questions as well as define the trends that they see coming down the pike and how they will affect your meetings program.
The gig economy, infrastructure builders and other project-based workers are helping to boost demand for one of the fastest growing segments of the hotel industry: extended stay. How are companies identifying and managing extended business trips – stays of five days or more, weeks or even months?
Business travelers who stay five or more nights in a hotel currently comprise more than one-quarter of demand for the nation’s 56,000 hotels and 5.2 million rooms. Properties specifically designed and marketed as extended stay facilities currently represent 8% of hotel inventory with more than 50,000 new rooms in the pipeline.
What is the appeal and opportunity for extended stay within managed travel? Listen as travel managers and industry professionals define the market, opportunities and traveler benefits.
Matching travel and meeting payment charges to transactions continues to be a time-consuming, costly and frustrating process for some travel, meeting and expense professionals. Learn how a leading travel manager, travel management company and payment provider are using technology, processes and creative thinking to end the matching games in this free 60-minute BTN Group webinar, sponsored by CSI globalVCard.
What steps should companies take to ease monthly reconciliation challenges? How should companies integrate single-use virtual payments into bookings to link a trip to a payment? What do you need to know about APIs to rely more on automation and less on manual matching that can waste hours of productivity each month? What are the pros, cons and options of outsourcing reconciliation? Register today and remember to log in to the live event to ask your own questions.