Distribution, mistribution, right?
Well, not exactly. But we’ve all gotten pretty good at
talking about airline distribution in managed travel over the past three years
or so. And if I’m reading the industry right, we’re a bit exhausted by New
Distribution Capability promises and the protracted time-to-market for realizing
its benefits. Honestly, I’m not jaded yet about NDC’s possibilities, but
perhaps I’m too patient, and in my position as a journalist, it’s not exactly
impacting my on-the-ground operations in real time, so my patience isn’t being
tried on a daily basis by increasing content fragmentation. As a travel
manager, yours likely is, and you can thank a major evolutionary fault line in 2015
for that.
I took the helm of Business Travel News as editor in chief
in 2015. No, no… that’s not the fault line, but it will always be milestone for
me. Another milestone: I had a 10-week-old baby, so I was tired and stressed
as well as excited to take on this new challenge.
I didn’t see this part coming, however, just three weeks
into my tenure:
Lufthansa announced on June 2 it would take branded fares out of the
GDS by Sep. 1, and such fares would only be offered on its direct booking sites. Additionally,
the carrier would begin to charge a €16 Distribution Cost Charge for bookings
made within the GDS. The latter was made with the declaration from CFO Jens Bischof that Lufthansa was “just not willing to pay the bills of others at this point.”
He added that the carrier believed “the market is ready for this change,” and “Somebody’s
got to do it.”
The industry was in an absolute uproar. We did some great
reporting on it, and here are several articles to peruse in your free time. While
some strategists supported the move (certain airlines, in particular,
watched the fallout very closely), those who hoped for some great Schadenfreude
for Lufthansa’s strategy, weren’t particularly rewarded.
Indeed, Lufthansa really didn’t back off its strategy. (For
those in attendance at The
Beat Live in 2019—four years later!—they witnessed some on-stage anger, still
fresh). Lufthansa increased the charge to €19 in 2020, and then did so again in
2024, with differing costs per GDS. The carrier also levied a smaller €8 DCC for
NDC bookings via the GDS along the way.
And while Lufthansa gave us an earthquake of a story in
2015, there was another, quieter evolution underway that would change the
industry as much—and possibly more—over the long term. Indeed, we are still in the beginning stages of it today.
Machine Learning & Personalized Managed Travel Apps
First, I want to thank senior transportation editor Donna M. Airoldi, executive editor Michael B. Baker, managing and research editor Chris
Davis and BTN Europe chief editor Andy Hoskins for helping with this week’s BTN Weekend article. As
always, Gianna Song has compiled the 2015 timeline.
2015 was the year machine learning—and a vision
for artificial intelligence-aided travel management—began to put up green
shoots in our industry. Not all the apps below actually touch the world of AI,
but all of them lean hard into personalization and personal assistance for
managed travelers in a way that ultimately would lead our industry into the AI
revolution that, I believe, we are about to see happen right now, before our
eyes.
All of the following startups were founded in 2015. Some of
them have grown into giants, others were acquired and removed from the industry or even shut down entirely. But each of them inspired a new way of thinking that perhaps
only now do we have the technology in place to deliver on the vision of
automated personalization.
While I know that some take a silver lining view of the pandemic and would submit that it sped some technologies into market; I would suggest that it did not do that for corporate travel. In the big picture, perhaps, ChatGPT and GenAI advanced faster in the downturn given the amount of communication that turned online. I would not be the expert to say. But you
Editor’s Note: This is a really, really long read, so grab
your coffee, smoothie, wine, whiskey or whatever makes your weekend great, and settle
in. The good news is that you can take it a piece at a time. We’ve put these in
alphabetical order, so we don’t play favorites. (I do have a favorite, but I’m
not telling which one.)
WHERE ARE THEY NOW – THE 2015 TRAVEL APP GENERATION
Mezi – The TMC Heartbreak Acquisition
By
July 2017 Mezi had piloted with a dozen TMCs to provide an natural language
processing platform that enhanced agent productivity and traveler satisfaction.
Among first TMC to jump into contract and implementation was Casto Travel,
which launched
Marco in September 2017 as a private label AI-powered personal travel assistant
and booking agent for business travelers. CEO Marc Casto told BTN the implementation
process had been easier than—but not dissimilar to—changing GDSs, in terms of
training agents on new systems. But that agents were excited. Adelman Travel
and Sarosh Waghmar’s W Travel (precursor to Spotnana) were also clients.
Flashback to 2015, however, and Mezi was just finding its
market. Founders Swapnil Shinde and brother Snehal Shinde had targeted the app
to tend to “the most annoying” tasks associated with buying stuff online,
according to a Dec. 11, 2015 article in TechCrunch. That year, the company raised
$2.8 million in backing from Nexus Venture Partners.
The app focused on getting things done for busy people. For
example, finding specific items that were out of stock in mainstream retails
streams or gather disparate items from lots of places and have those shopping
tasks done. It worked on what the founders characterized as 20 percent
artificial intelligence through the messaging app and 80 percent human
assistance. Users would text in natural language through the app. The algorithms
would isolate the key information from the text, augment that information with
supportive shopping context and pass it along to human assistants who would do
the actual shopping. The goal, according to Swapnil Shinde, was to flip that
protocol to 80 percent AI, 20 percent human.
Among those “the most annoying” shopping tasks the app focused
on was travel bookings, and over time, travel became the sole focus of Mezi,
specifically corporate travel. Corporate travel tech and relationship expert Johnny
Thorsen came on board at Mezi in May 2017, juuuuuuust before sealing those
TMC deals. Coincidence? Probably not.
Mezi competed in BTN’s 2017 Innovate Awards, receiving an
honorable mention. At that point, the company’s chatbot-to-human ratio for
handling requests was 60:40. Swapnil Shinde, who presented at the event,
estmated the bots would handle 80 percent of requests within six months. He
also said the company was not taking any more clients and would focus on fully
integrating with the ones it had.
Should that have been a warning? BTN had uncovered that the company
was already working with American Express, but Mezi would not say whether it
was the card company or the TMC. By January 2018, American Express card company
announced it would acquire Mezi as the engine behind a new card member
recommendations app AskAmex. By June it pulled
away from its TMC contracts and out of corporate travel entirely.
Lola – Big Founder Falters
Former Kayak co-founder and chief technology officer Paul
English and former Kayak chief architect Bill O’Donnell founded
machine-learning and algorithm-powered Lola travel app in 2015. While the app
wasn’t designed initially to cater to business travelers, English told BTN that
75 percent of users were business travelers from the get-go. By
2017, the company made the pivot to cater to their needs—mainly on the
basis that frequent business travelers are those who could use the app often
and create the data streams required to mine and predict their booking
preferences.
Boston-based Lola raised more than $71 million in venture
funding from 2015 to 2019. After pivoting completely to business travel, the
company introduced travel management tools like policy and data reporting
suites called Lola
Works in March 2018.
In November of the same year, Lola made headlines via a
partnership with American
Express Global Business Travel wherein users of the Lola app would be
serviced by GBT agents when needed and Lola subscribers would have access to
GBT’s negotiated rates as well. The partnership was to be exclusive for five
years, wherein GBT would provide an on ramp to Lola and when companies grew out
of the travel management “lite” platform, they would be passed back to GBT as a
more robust account.
On the back of the partnership, Lola raised
$37 million to fund workforce and tech growth.
The partnership with GBT, however, was never fully realized,
thanks in part to the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down travel. In 2020, the
company attempted to pivot
into expense management with a Visa-branded payment system. By 2021 the
company ceased operations and its assets were sold
to Capital One, in a trend of banks and payment solutions snapping up automated
travel tech platforms to provide services to their card members. The GBT partnership
was dissolved on news of the acquisition, and all Lola users were transitioned
to Amex GBT’s Neo1 travel management platform.
Pana – Pivot After Pivot
Co-founded by Devon Tivona, Lianne Haug and Sam Felsenthal, Pana
launched
as a chat-based virtual travel assistant, helping travelers book and manage
itineraries tailored to their preference. With initial users largely outside of
managed corporate travel programs, Pana eventually pivoted to bring that use to
managed corporate travel, handling the travel for guest travelers. The
technology handled booking, service, payment and reconciliation for such
non-employee travelers as job candidates, consultants or interns.
Tackling an issue that requires a time-consuming, manual
process even for well-managed travel programs, Pana made inroads in managed
corporate travel. By 2019, when the startup was
named both the judges’ and the people’s choice at BTN’s annual Innovation
Faceoff, it counted more than 150 enterprises as clients, including
biopharmaceutical and technology companies.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Pana in 2021 was
acquired by spend management platform Coupa for about $48.5 million, which
would spell the end of its use in the guest traveler space and eventually the
technology itself.
Rather than continue it as a standalone offering, Coupa used
its technology—as well as the technology from price assurance technology Yapta,
which Coupa also had acquired—to launch
a travel booking module, and Tivona joined Coupa as head of travel and
expense. Tivona departed Coupa in 2023, and last year, Coupa announced
it was phasing out its travel module, with Coupa Travel scheduled to be
fully retired as of Jan. 31, 2026.
While Pana will sunset along with that technology, Tivona
and Felsenthal are making a comeback to the guest travel management space with
a new platform, Juno, set for launch in June. Tivona said he and Felsenthal
had been constantly hearing from former customers who were looking for
something to fill the void in the guest travel management space, so this time,
they are launching a platform originally designed for that purpose with lessons
learned from their experience with Pana. They’ll have some competition,
however, as former Google travel buyer Greg Wilczek also
is launching a platform for non-profiled travelers, called EmPath, around
the same time.
Roadmap – BTN 2015 Innovation Winner, Turned Profitable
Fast
Roadmap launched in 2015 as a spinoff of Sound of Data. The Dutch
company, founded by Jeroen van Velzen and Koen Bavnik, offered a solution that it
likened to a Swiss Army Knife for corporate travel. It blended corporate and
consumer mobile travel apps and delivered them in a single app—customized and
branded for each corporate client—to managed travelers and support them while
on the road.
It almost immediately grabbed industry attention, winning
the 2015
Innovator of the Year and 2015 People’s Choice awards at BTN’s Innovate
conference that September.
Using the app, travelers had the ability to see their entire
trip from end to end in the app, including best transportation options when
landing in a destination, and restaurant recommendations near one’s hotel,
including those used by colleagues.
CEO van Velzen at the time said that when starting out, the
company thought it would be easier to land small and midsize businesses, but
soon discovered that “the
bigger the company, the bigger the problem, and that’s when we’re
needed.”
The company became cash-flow positive in January 2018, and that
May it landed €4 million in Series A funding.
Within a few years, it built up a client base of about 16
large corporates, including Nike, Merck, KPMG and Microsoft. The latter was
particularly notable because the startup was built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud
platform.
As the industry was beginning to recover from the pandemic, expense
management conglomerate Emburse
in March 2021 swooped in and acquired Roadmap. About a year later, the
company launched Emburse
Go, a new app designed for small and midsize enterprises that was
standardized, not customized. Larger clients still would have the custom
offering and be serviced by what became Emburse Go Premier, which had added
several additional features.
Less than a year after acquiring reshopping company Tripbam
in 2023, Emburse introduced hotel reshopping
capabilities into the Emburse Go Premier app.
Emburse continues to sell both Emburse Go and Emburse Go
Premier.
Van Velzen left the company at the beginning of 2024 to
pursue other tech and startup opportunities. He currently serves on the boards
of Bunchmark and Oneteam, according to his LinkedIn profile, and is in stealth
mode with another startup focusing on “upgrading human interactions” in the
workplace. Bavnik remains with Emburse as SVP enterprise sales.
TravelBank – The Expense-Driven Travel App
Expense management provider TravelBank hit the market as a
challenge to the “retroactive” nature of expense reporting systems. Rather
than having to wait to see what employees expensed when they filed an expense
report, travelers submit their trip date and city into TravelBank, which then
provided an estimate of the trip cost, using current pricing information, for a
manager’s approval. When travelers book travel and submit expenses, TravelBank
checks to see whether they were within that budget, and if they beat budget
expectations, they can be rewarded in the form of points that
can be accumulated toward incentives.
Following its official launch in 2016, TravelBank continued
to add clients and investments over the years—actor and media mogul Will
Smith’s venture capital fund Dreamers VC was among those contributing
capital—and it ventured into new models such as a
“gray label” service powering an online expense and booking tool
for World Travel Inc.
U.S. Bank, already a partner with TravelBank via an
integration of the bank’s virtual payment tool into TravelBank, acquired
TravelBank in late 2021. There has since been some deeper consolidation,
including a
U.S. Bank combined travel and expense offering for emerging middle market
clients.
TravelBank itself, however, has remained a distinctive
offering and brand, with co-founder Duke Chung continuing to serve as its CEO,
and it reports 20,000 companies as customers on its website.
TravelPerk – Maybe We Should Now Call It Travel“Werk”
Barcelona-based TravelPerk was founded in 2015 by Avi Meir, Javier
Suarez, and Ron Levin, initially
as a savings incentive tool for business travelers before pivoting to
corporate travel management. The platform has been “werk”ing it ever since.
Positioning itself as a “next-generation, all-in-one travel booking
and management platform,” TravelPerk touted consumer-grade usability and
extensive content, drawing from multiple GDSs and “most” major leisure OTAs and
metasearch engines.
A beta platform
launched in 2016, and between 2017 and 2019 the company secured three
rounds of funding. Its investment trajectory was steep, as was its business
growth, with volumes reportedly increasing 30 percent month-over-month in 2018,
according to CEO Avi Meir. Offices were opened in London and Berlin, with
further expansion planned in Amsterdam and Paris… and then Covid hit.
It was the pandemic that steered TravelPerk towards its first
acquisition–that
of Albatross, a tool delivering information on Covid-related travel
restrictions and local guidelines to customers during those turbulent years.
In spite of the pandemic’s many challenges, there was light at the end
of the tunnel – a lot of it—with 2021 proving its watershed moment. In January
it secured the acquisition of NexTravel—significantly
expanding its US presence—and in July of UK-based Click
Travel. Both were like-minded, digital-first TMCs. The two deals, together
with organic growth, saw TravelPerk’s customer numbers increase threefold in
2021.
Further funding rounds followed in May 2021 and January 2022 – when
TravelPerk achieved unicorn status with a valuation exceeding
$1 billion – and again in January 2024, aahead of another significant
acquisition. This time it was Chicago-based
AmTrav, with its business doubling TravelPerk’s US revenue.
The momentum continued into 2025 with the acquisition of Swiss expense
management platform Yokoy
and an additional $200 million raised in new investment.
Today, the TMC has eight offices globally, more than 1,200 employees,
and over 6,000 customers. TravelPerk’s story of investment and acquisitions is
poised continue.
TripActions (Navan) – The First Unicorn
Navan today is becoming a travel and expense behemoth, with
a valuation of more than $9 billion and around 3,000 employees worldwide. Ten years
ago, though, it was a little startup with a different name with a dream of
taking on the big travel management companies with a model that focused on
online sourcing, servicing and expense management.
The company that was founded under the name TripActions in
California in 2015 would go on to do just that. Not many saw that coming 10
years ago, though, when a pair of former Hewlett-Packard executives, fresh off
the sale of the first startup they founded, decided to dip their feet into the
world of corporate travel.
Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig between them had decades of
experience in product management, engineering and research and development when
they left HP and launched in 2012 their first startup: StreamOnce, a platform
for businesses that enabled social collaboration across multiple systems that
they sold a year later to Jive Software.
Next up was TripActions, which Cohen as CEO and Twig as CTO
launched as a tech platform that showed travelers personalized booking options
pulled from a handful of content sources. While building out the platform and
attracting corporate clients took a few years to set in motion, there was one
aspect of business development the TripActions excelled at right away: raising
capital.
TripActions fueled its growth with one round of financing
after another, with $27 million through 2017, $51
million in early 2018, another $154
million later in 2018, $250
million in 2019, $155
million in early 2021, another $275
million later in 2021, and $300
million in 2022. All told and including debt financing, the company has
raised more than $2 billion and in 2022 had a market valuation of $9.2 billion.
What did TripActions do with all that funding? It built out
its travel management platform to incorporate a full realm of air, hotel and
rail content, and it developed Liquid, a payment and expense platform. It also
started to acquire traditional TMCs, particularly in Europe, most notably Reed
& Mackay along with Resia
in Sweden, Comtravo
in Germany and Atlanta
Agencia Viajes in Spain. Along the way, it picked up enterprise travel
management customers including Unilever, Adobe and Thomson Reuters.
In the ensuing years, TripActions rebranded
as Navan, which it considered a broader brand identity to reflect the range
of services it offers, and Cohen landed on BTN’s annual 25 Most Influential in
Business Travel list four times, in 2018,
2021,
2022
and 2023.
It’s not always easy to figure out why some startups
flourish while others disappear. For every Concur or Cvent that grows big and
powerful in the business travel industry, there are a dozen, all led by smart
people who worked hard, that melt away. Whatever the formula that led little
TripActions in 2015 to grow into billion-dollar Navan in 2025, Cohen & Co. clearly built a lasting foundation.
_______________________________________________________________________
Plenty of other travel management events happened in 2015. Here are the highlights from the year.
_______________________________________________________________________
JANUARY
InterContinental Hotels Group agrees to buyKimpton Hotels & Restaurants for $430
million, looking to expand Kimpton’s growth in the US and beyond.
Hyatt plans to offer free Wi-Fi for guests at all its properties worldwide
beginning February 2015.
Following the SAP acquisition, Concur co-founders Rajeev Singh and
Mike Hilton announce that they will step down at the end of the month.
FEBRUARY
Expedia seeks to acquire Orbitz Worldwide, including corporate travel agency Orbitz
for Business in a cash deal valued at $1.6 billion.
https://www.thebeat.travel/News/Amex-Reinvests-719-Million-Gain-From-Concur-Sale
Click Travel moves to relevance
display from cost-based one.
Traveport pushes non-fare ancillaries in new distribution agreements, but not all facets are ready for prime time.
MARCH
In an antitrust lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice orders American Express to change or eliminate provisions that
hinder merchants from encouraging consumers to use other modes of payment. Amex
vows to appeal.
Delta CEO Richard Anderson speaks out about U.S. Open
Skies agreements with Gulf carriers Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways
regarding subsidies the airlines receive from their governments. Overall U.S. carriers want to revisit such agreements given the
advantages Gulf carriers get from subsidies.
Sabre discloses in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing the intent
towards a technology acquisition. Many believed it to be Abacus, and the distribution company did complete an acquisition of Abacus in July.
The Pittsburgh Business Travel Association ends its affiliation with the Global Business Travel Association to become an independent organization.
CWT prepares a new user interface for its hotel
review portal Hotel Intel. The company is also working on new analysis
features for corporate travel buyers and planned integration with booking
tools.
GoldSpring Consulting acquires Management Alternatives, an industry consulting firm. It
also wants to buy 3d Travel Metrics and other analytics technology for hotel
and airline sourcing.
JetBlue debuts its three-tiered bundled fare structure, which has no free checked bags at
its lowest level. According to the carrier, this would bring about at least $65
million in incremental operating income in 2015.
Virgin America competes directly with Southwest
Airlines as it plans to add nonstop service between Dallas Love Field and Austin-Bergstrom International
Airport.
Frits van Paasschen exits as CEO of Starwood Hotels
& Resorts, and board member Adam Aron is named interim CEO.
Wyndham strengthens its group business with its $57 million purchase of
meetings-focused Dolce Hotels and Resorts.
Marriott International looks to acquire Toronto-based Delta Hotels and Resorts for
around $135 million.
Migration to chip-and-PIN cards continues apace with new
U.S. standard merchants put in charge of changing their point of sale systems.
APRIL
Lower oil costs have softened the airfare hikes in many global regions BCD
Travel’s Advito predicted in 2014. Advito comes out with a new forecast
that calls for 2015 airfares in most locales to stay flat year over year or
even to decrease.
Lufthansa launches three new pricing tiers for European international routes and
local German routes.
Airbnb’s business travel lead Marc McCabe talks to BTN about how the company has entered
the Concur TripLink app center and is targeting corporate business.
Concur revokes Deem’s access to its marketplace.
Farelogix CEO Jim Davidson says he has offered the SPRK agency desktop to all major GDSs as Farelogix evolves
to a provider of airline merchandising engines, pricing engines and API
interfaces.
Uber for Business head Driss Benamour in a blog post announced the availability of
customized policy controls within the ride-hailing app.
Australia’s Corporate Travel Management told
investors that they can expect further acquisitions in the U.S. market.
At the CAPA Americas Aviation Summit 2015, U.S. and Persian Gulf
airlines debate about the federal government revisiting the Open Skies pacts
with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Online booking and expense management provider Traveldoo adds geocoding and voice recognition features to its mobile app,
claiming to be first in keyless expense.
US Airways accuses Sabre and other GDSs of collusion involving coordinated
pricing, shared strategies, and restrictive contract terms.
Hogg Robinson Group modifies its business into two
distinct brands. HRG is the group’s travel management company for multinational
corporations. Meanwhile, expense management division Spendvision has rebrands
as Fraedom, a software-as-a-service provider.
MAY
The EU’s cap on interchange fees prompts AirPlus to
charge transaction fees in Germany.
Financial services firm Barclays works to improve its
data warehouse and build a do-it-yourself travel reporting system.
Uber ups its market share of corporate travelers
Wyndham Hotel Group aspires to grow and to improve
its brand differentiation in the market.
JPMorgan Chase says that it will sunset its
international commercial card business by the end of 2015.
Delta Air Lines and Aeromexico propose a $1.5
billion U.S.-Mexico joint venture with the U.S. Department of Transportation,
which would let them plan services and set fares together.
Southwest sides with the Department of Justice in opposing changes Amex proposed for merchant pacts. It’s the
only airline to weigh in on the suit.
JUNE
Lufthansa updates its distribution strategy,
introducing its now-famous distribution cost charge, claiming it no longer wants to
subsidize the profits of the rest of the supply chain.
Cvent buys SignUp4, its first purchase of a competitor, for $22
million.
JetBlue’s Mint premium class product rolls out to more corporate routes.
Alitalia says it will discontinue its Air France-KLM joint ventures after they expire in 2017.
Sabre and eNett launch prefunded virtual cards for those without credit lines.
Starwood explores ways to increase shareholder value, including a sale. The move sets the
stage for a bidding war for the hospitality brand in 2016.
JULY
The U.S. Department of Justice investigates collusion among U.S. airlines. While it did not cause any
major short-term industry changes, it ultimately shifted how airlines evaluate
their business and capacity decisions.
United Airlines plans to stop operations at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, as it
doubles down on Newark Liberty International. It flew its intended last flight from JFK on October 25, 2015. The carrier
returned to JFK in 2021, then “temporarily suspended” service the next year.
United invests $30 million in biofuel developer Fulcrum BioEnergy and negotiates an agreement to buy at
least 90 million gallons from the provider for 10 years or more.
The Global Business Travel Association proposes bylaw changes for the second time in three years. This time
the bylaw changes are characterized as “cleanup” by then-GBTA president and 2007 BTN Travel Manager of the Year Donna Kelliher. But they continue to advocate for term
limit removals for board members and seem to make the process for initiating
and voting on changes murkier.
AccorHotels makes an unprecedented move, stating it will sell non-AccorHotels
properties on AccorHotels.com to raise the value proposition of direct
booking.
IHG begins pilots for mobile check-in and a hotel messaging system,
but both pilots are in a limited rollout.
Expense management provider Chrome River secures $100
million in Series D financing, adding to the $17 million in Series C
funding the platform raised in 2014.
KDS launches personalized search results and a
content hub for its Neo booking tool.
AUGUST
Travel and Transport spinoff company leverages big data to launch a visualization platform for travel and
other relevant data. The as-yet unnamed technology will become DVI, or Data Visualization Intelligence and will be headed up by
Brian Beard.
Choice Hotels creates a way to avoid faxing authorizations, one of the most critical issues for
virtual cards.
Judge Nicholas Garaufis denied final approval of a class action settlement between American Express and
merchants after evidence of unethical conduct and improper data sharing between
the opposing counsel.
Airbnb unveils tools that enable travel managers to view employee bookings and itineraries
at Airbnb properties, export companywide financial data and reports in real
time and centralize company billing.
Etihad establishes its own alliance structure, with the intent to pull select
corporate travel away from Europe and toward its Abu Dhabi hub.
Travel and Transport takes a large minority interest
in German travel management company Depart MfG Reisen. It is the first of several planned
acquisitions.
Lufthansa signs up for Concur’s TripLink system to allow travel managers to track
and handle bookings made directly on the carrier’s website.
SEPTEMBER
IATA broadens engagement with travel buyers, sensing
concern about New Distribution Capability
Litigation challenging Uber’s business model broadens
to class action
Deem CEO Patrick Grady, after switching to ground
transportation focus, says a new platform will make Deem an on-demand corporate
chauffeured car offering.
American Express enables Apple Pay for corporate use
KDS reiterates TMC partner philosophy and affirms it’s
ready for the U.S. market after years of failing to gain traction.
FTC-Wyndham cybersecurity case gets go-ahead
U.S. hotel supply breaks 5 million room mark according to hotel
analysis firm Smith Travel Research
OCTOBER
NuTravel hires Southwest veteran Rob Brown to build direct-to-consumer online portals for
airlines.
Routehappy—a technology platform that allows booking
tools to display what amenities are wrapped into their airline seat—gains $3 million in funding.
The U.S. Department of Justice approves the $1.3 billion Orbitz-Expediamerger.
Judge Lorna Schofield denies US Airways’ call for
declaratory judgment and calls off the October 26 bench trial start date. The airline wants to revise its
charges against Sabre to pursue a jury trial.
The European Technology & Travel Services Association accuses Lufthansa of breaching rules on computerized reservations systems.
Roadmap wins BTN’s 2015 Innovator of the Year Award; it is one of
several corporate travel startups to pivot to corporate travel in 2015.
NOVEMBER
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr defends distribution cost
charge as “the future”
American, Sabre launch paid seats via NDC
In $23 billion deal, Visa Inc. announces it will acquire
Visa Europe In Q2
Airbnb unveils host tools to attract business travelers,
manage pricing
Marriott announces plans to buy Starwood;
little did the company know how steep the bidding war would become with a Chinese-backed
competitor
Terror Attacks in Paris kill 130 people, a hostage
crisis in Bamako, Mali leaves 27 dead. Attacks in Denmark, Nigeria and Turkey
also turn companies to take extra caution for travelers. U.S. State Department
issues travel alert through February 2016 urging travelers to be vigilant and
to register with the Smart Traveler Enrollment program.
DECEMBER
American Airlines follows Delta and United airlines in changing its loyalty program from a mileage-based system to a cost-based system. PwC analysis shows that travelers lose negligible points in moving from mileage- to cost-based platform, but it depends on the type of traveler. Premium and business class travelers tend to benefit.
Air France-KLM scraps short-haul surcharges, but wraps them into the overall ticket price-sometimes at a higher rate.
EU interchange fee cap regulation begins; the result, according to industry experts, is a scaleback in individual pay cards.
Multinational travel service providers that house data in the United States begin to face a challenge with European court decision that invalidates U.S. companies’ ability to self audit data privacy protocols under the previous Safe Harbor agreement.
Timeline produced this week by AI and BTN editorial content and engagement manager Gianna Song
_______________________________________________________________________
Elizabeth West is the editorial director of the
BTN Group. She has reported on the business travel and meetings industries for
24 years. Beth was editor-in-chief of Meeting News from 2006 to 2008 and
director of content solutions for ProMedia Travel from 2008 to 2011, when
ProMedia was acquired by Northstar Travel Media and merged with BTN. She became
editor-in-chief of BTN in 2015 and editorial director of the BTN Group in
2019.
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