The Biz at BTN Podcast · Business Travel News

2024 What to Watch - Editor Roundtable

·50 min·3 clips

Beth says loyalty is shifting toward direct bookings and could extend to hotels, not just airlines.

1. The Biz at BTN Podcast episode “2024 What to Watch - Editor Roundtable” brings together BTN editors to sort through business travel issues for 2024. 2. Michael Baker serves as executive editor and moderator, and he is joined by Don Iroldi, Eamon Cohen, Chris Davis, Andy Hoskins, and Elizabeth West, all of whom write for BTN. 3. The episode asks which 2024 trends matter most for corporate travel, with the panel focusing on M&A, loyalty, AI, OBTs, regulation, and distribution. 4. Chris Davis says business-travel M&A has been “pretty lean,” even after Alaska Airlines announced in December that it would buy Hawaiian Airlines. 5. Chris also cites Blackstone buying Cvent, Burst buying TripBand, Grey Dawes buying Express Travel, and Choice abandoning its hostile pursuit of Wyndham on March 11. 6. He connects the slow pace of deals to hesitation about corporate-travel recovery, recession fears in 2022 and 2023, higher interest rates, Ukraine, and the Middle East. 7. Chris says the Biden administration has been “very aggressive” in opposing travel mergers, pointing to the JetBlue-American Northeast Alliance and JetBlue-Spirit cases. 8. He adds that the FTC’s December merger guidelines suggest regulators are less interested in negotiated fixes and more willing to block transactions outright. 9. On the TMC side, Chris says consolidation could follow the shift to NDC, because post-pandemic corporate travel remains around 75% of pre-pandemic volume for some firms. 10. He quotes American Express GBT CEO Paul Abbott saying growth through acquisition remains “a significant and attractive opportunity” in a large, fragmented market. 11. Beth West argues that loyalty programs are becoming more important for suppliers, not just airlines, and she expects hotels to follow the same direction. 12. She says American Airlines’ move to award points only for direct or preferred bookings is a signal that direct channels are becoming a priority. 13. Beth describes attribute-based selling as breaking a hotel or airfare into component parts and then bundling those parts back into loyalty tiers. 14. She says the challenge is to let suppliers and travel managers share the customer while respecting permissions, transparency, and data privacy. 15. Beth points to blockchain-like permissions, supplier reporting, and traveler consent as possible ways to show value inside corporate travel programs. 16. She says it is harder this year for buyers to win meaningful discounts, so travel managers may need to lean harder on service, support, duty of care, and traveler status. 17. Andy Hoskins says TMCs are moving cautiously on AI, with companies like Amex GBT, FCM, and Fox World Travel focusing first on internal efficiencies and SOP support. 18. He uses Air Canada’s chatbot dispute and a poor seat-selection chat experience as examples of why legal risk and customer-service failures slow customer-facing AI rollouts. 19. Beth Hoskins says the OBT debate now centers on content delivery, NDC, Ryanair, and direct connections, which matters most to travel managers watching fragmentation. 20. Listeners who track corporate travel distribution, supplier strategy, and loyalty economics will get the most out of this roundtable, while casual listeners looking for a single story arc may skip it.

As heard by us

A candid editorial roundtable that turns 2024 corporate travel trends into practical questions.

BTN's 2024 What to Watch series ends with a roundtable that feels more like a working editorial meeting than a polished recap, which is part of the appeal.

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Why you'd press play

You want BTN's editors to stress-test the biggest corporate travel trends for 2024.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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