Editor's Note: Our Backpages
<B> Editor's Note: Our Backpages</B>
By David Meyer, Editor-In-Chief
Fifteen years since the birth of BTN we find ourselves looking back at how far we have come and getting some perspective on how far yet we need to go, both as an industry and as journalists covering it.
That first issue, May 14, 1984, reflected the wide-eyed wonder of those early heady days, six years after deregulation, when the practitioners of buying and managing travel services for businesses got tooled up for a new kind of professional discipline.
We've been caught up ever since in this whirlwind we call an industry, even as the travel management function grew in sophistication and our editorial outlook matured. The story of Business Travel News reflects the industry trends of consolidation, automation, globalization, and the convergence of travel and meetings. Along the way, Business Travel News documented the evolution of the function of business travel negotiating and management for individual and group travel. This dynamic industry has yielded a bountiful crop of stories about those changes. Now, as we look back, the level of tooling up that business travel management is embarking on today as the industry moves to accept online travel management tools seems to be bringing us full cycle to our beginnings.
In this anniversary issue, we're throwing a little celebration. We're freshening up the design of our newspaper and our logo, and, in the following pages, we're taking a retrospective look at strides made and people worth recognizing as we covered the story of how the industry developed.
Born out of the deregulation of airline prices in 1978, the management of travel spending by U.S. businesses kicked up substantially by 1984. The year Business Travel News launched was also when the Airlines Reporting Corp. began and American Express formed its travel management service.
The first issue of Business Travel News was published by CMP Publications of Manhassett under editor Mitch York. A year later, a competitor launched Corporate Travel magazine and the Corporate Travel World show in New York. United News bought Gralla in 1983 and Miller Freeman in 1985. Jim Alkon became BTN editor in chief in 1987. United News integrated Miller Freeman and Gralla in 1991. In 1993, David Meyer became BTN editor in chief and Miller Freeman bought the CMP travel group. The acquired Business Travel News picked up Corporate Travel's assets, executive editor Mary Ann McNulty, the Corporate Travel World and Corporate Travel West shows, and several special issues--The Corporate Travel 100 and Best Practices, Corporate Travel Index, Automation Directory and Black Book--that complemented BTN's Handbook, Annual Business Travel Survey and other special research-driven features.
The paper has become electronic as well. Current issues are posted on the day of publication on our Web site, BTNonline.com. The site includes a searchable archive of newspapers since March 1996.
Meanwhile, Business Travel News remains firmly committed to delivering the news that buyers need to negotiate with travel suppliers and manage internal resources.
We're raising a toast to you, our core readers who perform the function of business travel buyer, and another to the industry's best practitioners in the BTN Hall of Fame. Our focus here is on the people who make this travel world go round--the corporate travel buyers and the key travel supplier executives who make or break the deals.
It's been our privilege to be part of the 15-year conversation with the major business travel industry players and innovators. Without the willingness of so many of the best travel management practitioners to share their knowledge, and to give us their trust and patient explanations, we couldn't have begun to tell the whole story. They have our thanks.