Jay Campbell

More hotel sales and a chatbot are helping Corporate Travel Management handle more business with fewer people. Called Scout, the chatbot rolled out to all CTM regions as of June 2024. Describing the impact on efficiency, executives during a Tuesday analyst conference call cited an 11 percent increase in revenue in Australia and New Zealand during the six months ending…

Four in five business travelers “never” or “rarely” choose out-of-policy options, according to an April BCD Travel poll of 1,201 business travelers worldwide. Seventeen percent indicated they sometimes chose out-of-policy options, 3 percent said they “often” did and 1 percent picked “always.” An unrelated May-June survey by Deloitte of 1,070 U.S. corporate travelers whose companies had company-approved booking tools or…

Since the fourth quarter of 2023, Flight Centre Travel Group’s corporate division has used artificial intelligence to categorize, prioritize (by revenue opportunity) and respond to more than half a million incoming customer emails. “Over 4,000 hours of agent time have been saved in the past quarter,” the company revealed last week. Freed-up agents can focus on “personalized, attentive service.” Meanwhile, AI-powered…

The Petition - On September 5, 2024, Steel Dynamics, Inc, Nucor Corporation, United States Steel Corporation, Wheeling-Nippon Steel, Inc...

On August 26, 2024, the Government of Canada announced that it will impose new tariffs and subsidy restrictions targeting clean vehicles, as well as tariffs on steel and aluminum products manufactured in China.1 The tariffs on clean vehicles will enter into force on October 1, 2024, while the proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum are provisionally set to enter into force on October 15, 2024. Proposals for more trade restrictions targeting Chinese exports may emerge over the next few months. The actions make Canada the latest country to join a growing trend of increasing restrictions on Chinese imports. The United States (Canada’s largest trading partner) has maintained tariffs on Chinese vehicles and metals since 2018, which the Biden administration plans to increase in the coming months.2

The United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority published more details on Aug. 30 about how it arrived at the need for an "in-depth" phase in its

After talking to customers, competitors and suppliers in the first phase of its examination of American Express Global Business Travel’s proposed acquisition of CWT, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority on Aug. 30 put out a lengthy report. One conclusion was that “tech entrants,” including Navan, were ill-equipped to serve large multinational corporate customers. In conversations this summer with The…

New York — Wisconsin-based Fox World Travel is in the second of five phases of building an artificial intelligence-augmented traveler experience designed to eventually deliver AI-powered ticketing and self-service as a conversation. Under a mantra of “fast, small steps,” the travel management company thus far has exposed the project to agents for guidance and troubleshooting, and travel managers for reporting. The company…

Booking Holdings’ Kayak For Business small and medium-sized enterprise travel offering is coming into its own after years in the making. A bevy of features in the new “Biz+” premium level fetches $20 per trip. Like the Blockskye-powered, large enterprise Kayak BTX variation that PwC is using and hawking, K4B for SMEs is positioned as a breakthrough in servicing capability….

New York — Maureen Brady in August stepped down from her role as chief commercial officer in North America at Corporate Travel Management after five years with the company and more than 30 years at seven other TMCs of various kinds. She’s taking a career break — not using the “R word” yet — and sat for an “Elephant In…