The Brain's Blog
Business Travel

Birger Oldorff to join travelBrain adding Travel Risk Management expertise

A new face in the team Travel Risk Management – an important part of the end-to-end process Travel Risk Management Benchmarking Audit 01.02.2017 – The topic leaves no one indifferent nowadays. Terrorism, natural disasters, political upheavals, not only in developing countries! Travel Risk Management and/or Duty of Care are at the top of the to-do list of travel managers, TMCs, travel agents and technology providers. The organizers of the London Business Travel Show recently published a study where travel security ranked second place among the top priorities of travel managers, just behind the evergreen – cost containment. In the

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Airlines

UPSIDE Gift Cards – the new currency in Business Travel?

The founder of priceline.com, the entrepreneur Jay Walker, has set-up a new start-up company. UPSIDE is the name of the new, innovative company. With the help of big data, cloud computing and a mobile app, Upside promise business travellers gift cards for flexibility.    What’s the benefit of UPSIDE Gift Cards? It is an interesting approach. But what exactly is UPSIDE? UPSIDE currently is only available in the US. When a business traveller books his/her international trip with UPSIDE (for now only available as flight in combination with a hotel) the UPSIDE «Flexibility Engine» is checking various data bases

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Consulting

The Event: Cvent Connect Las Vegas, June 26 – 30, 2016

Here at TravelBrain Strategic Meeting Management became a regular topic in many of our client projects. The lead in this area has my colleague Stefan Otter. This is the reason why he recently travelled to Las Vegas to attend the Cvent Connect Convention, one of the largest industry events on this topic. Please read his post about his trip and the convention. From June 26 to 30, 2016 Cvent Connect took place in Las Vegas. The yearly convention of Cvent, one of the leading event management software providers, is an event which draws global attention. Almost 3000 people attended

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Business Travel

Profile Management – a small one plays big

Martin Bachmann, the Head of the Swiss travel technology company Umbrella is not the tallest one. And Umbrella is – compared to other software providers – not the biggest player neither. But anyway, both are winning big with its profile management solution «Umbrella Faces». Beside Kuoni Business Travel and Lufthansa City Center (LCC) also the technology group ABB decided to use Umbrella. We at TravelBrain give attention to the subject Profile Management since the foundation of the company 10 years ago. One of the fist topics of TravelBrain One of my first topics at the start of TravelBrain has

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App Check

Mobile Hotel bookings – Turn back the times?

According to a recent communication by CWT, mobile hotel bookings via their App CWT to Go are booming. It looks like we are talking about a monthly growth rate of 20% and more! Are the Travel Management Companies (TMCs) such as CWT, BCD, HRG and American Express GBT able to turn back the times and win back long lost hotel bookings? The fact that the growth rate of mobile bookings are increasing does not really come as a surprise and is not knocking my socks off. Booking.com, HRS and some Last Minute Hotel Apps have cleared the way and their figures

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Business Travel

New Business Travel IQ benchmarking report shows highest TMC fees

A new benchmarking report has shed light on which European corporations are paying the highest travel management fees, based on where they are headquartered. In the follwoing guest post, David Chapple explains some of the differencies and the the reasons behind. The report from Business Travel iQ shows businesses in the UK and Ireland have the roughest deal, paying the most for online air bookings particularly long-haul and low-cost flights. They are charged more for online touched bookings, while also paying the third highest offline fees in Europe. French travel managers have a more mixed fee structure, the report

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Business Travel

Booking.com is targeting Business Travel

Booking.com – a subsidiary of Priceline – is currently trying to take the business travel sector by storm. The odds are not too bad for the hotel giant. No business traveller who does not know the website of Booking.com and its functionalities. But so far almost no business traveller was yet allowed to use it for booking a business trip. This might change soon for some corporations. The great user experience will be enhanced with corporate discounts, a loyalty program and a reporting. The Travel Management will be able to set maximum allowances and the locations of its own

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Airlines

Google Flights – ready, steady, launch

Nothing spectacular…… A couple of days ago Google – without making a lot of noise -has launched Google Flights in Switzerland. At first sight – nothing spectacular and by far no revolution in Metasearch. All functionalities of the application are pretty well known from sites such as ebookers, Expedia, Momondo and Kayak/Swoodoo. … but everything has changed But then everything has changed for the industry. Not that every agent on the phone will notice this immediately – it will take some time. From now on and without knowing any of the above mentioned Metasearch Engines, every caller will potentially know

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Business Travel

Ebola Crisis – International SOS Webinar

Daily there is news about the Ebola crisis. So it’s not surprising that the uncertainty grows. Companies and enterprises, in particular the Corporate Security Managers, as well as the Travel Managers are required in the current crisis. Besides the fact that employees are recalled from the endangered areas, one must also deal with the question whether and to what extent the travel activity should be restricted in the risk areas. For this purpose there should be different opinions and judgments on the part of the company. An objective assessment promises International SOS, a company that specializes on health care, medical advice

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Apple

TMC Apps – Updates from BCD and CWT

Last week was a bit hectic because of our message about the conversion at HRG with the resolution of the region HRG Europe Central. Since no official press releases were issued, half the world has fallen on our blog post. This involved a lot of emails and telephone inquiries. Now we focus on our projects again and watch what happens on the market around smartphone apps. During the last days almost simultaneously messages from BCD Travel and CWT about their smartphone tools arrived. While BCD now offers and application called “Trip Source, CWT promises new functionalities. What can the

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Business Travel

New HRG Structure – Europe Central Management get the boot

Hogg Robinson decided to give up the Region Europe Central by end of this year and to consolidate all countries under one European management team. This has a strong impact on the Swiss organisation managed by Beat Bürer who led Europe Central with some central functions out of Zurich. HRG Europe Central Management is History This re-organisation will make a number of functions to become redundant. HRG lays off the complete management – with one exception – in Switzerland. This includes Beat Bürer Head Switzerland & HRG Europe Central, Andreas Stehrenberger Head Sales & Account Management, Pierre-Yves Lecué Head Finance, Purchasing

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