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ACTE

The Event – ACTE Education Forum Zurich – 11 May 2017

It has now been a few days ago since we took part in the ACTE Education Forum at the Park Hyatt Zürich on May 11th 2017. ACTE invited folks to an open discussion on digitization in the Travel Industry and its effect on Travel Management under the banner question “Are you digital?”. An exciting forum with a good mix of travel managers and Travel Industry suppliers and an event that involved more preparation time in advance than usual. Things don’t always turn out as expected…. ACTE, like other event organizers, has changed how these events are structured and kicked

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Business Travel

New experts joining the travelBrain team

The mockingbirds are hummin’ and the industry press has already picked up the topic and reported about the latest additions to the travelBrain team. With Marco Zweifel and Jean-Daniel Ducret two well-know industry experts have recently joined the company. For the first time in travelBrain’s history we have a direct representation in the French part of Switzerland and an additional one for France. In addition to a part time assignment for a local TMC in Geneva, Jean-Daniel will support our clients as a consultant and project manager for sourcing projects, process analysis and optimisation, the implementation of the latest

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ACTE

ACTE Education Forum – 11 May 2017 in Zurich

Plans are apparently there to change. When I registered for this years ACTE Education Forum in Zurich on 11 May 2017 held in the Parky Hyatt Zurich I was expecting a relaxing afternoon with interesting topics and great discussons. The sessions announced on Digital Transformation and Hotel Sourcing were very promising. Only that my idea of having a quiet day later this week have changed dramatically. Which means that I will now be moderating two panel disucssions on the above subjects.    ACTE Education Forum – “Are you Digital” As seen in other such events on Corporate Travel, the

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Business Travel

Amadeus Customer Day in Zurich – the Amadeus Selling Platform Connect to be launched

After being released in various countries already, the Amadeus Selling Platform Connect is about to be launched in Switzerland during the Amadeus Customer Day on May 3rd in Zurich.   From 10 am until 2 pm the Amadeus staff will in hourly sessions present the platform to the agents. Snacks and beverages will most certainly be provided. Agenda and Registration (German only)   With the move to the device and platform agnostic version of the Amadeus selling platform, Amadeus fulfils a long standing requirement from Agents. Since quite some time Travelport offers such a solution with the Galileo Remote

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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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