On the Up and Up

Posted in Blog, The Wire by AirPlus US Team
Tags: business travel, The Wire, travel volumes

Business travel buyers and suppliers project rising travel volumes and identify new pressures from upper management for the second half of 2010.

Airlines, hotels and car rental companies in the United States reported good to excellent recovery patterns as business travel hit an acceptable stride in the second quarter of 2010. These earnings numbers are supported by worldwide travel agency sales data from Airlines Reporting Corporation, which has shown an average increase of 21.7 percent over the first half of 2010 based on 7.5 percent higher domestic transactions and 11 percent more international transactions when compared to the same period last year. In an online survey of 80 travel buyers and suppliers conducted in late July and early August by AirPlus International, rates of optimism surrounding travel volume increases for the second half of 2010 showed some marked differences for buyers versus suppliers.

The majority of both groups projected business travel volume increases overall, and a larger percentage of buyers than suppliers actually expect to see increases in their company‘s business travel volume in the latter half of 2010 when compared to the same period last year. Suppliers, however, showed somewhat more optimism than buyers when asked about the specific rate of that increase.

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After the Ash

Posted in Blog, The Wire by AirPlus US Team
Tags: Business Traveler, communications policy, The Wire, travel management, volcano ash

Travel management improvements emerge from the ash of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

When the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down European air space this past April, it stranded more than 10 million travelers across the globe. As travel management professionals know all too well, it was their company’s responsibility to provide reasonable accommodations during the crises for their business travelers, as well as a safe return home. While most companies worked hard to live up to this responsibility, doing so came at a cost, according to a recent online poll of travel buyers and suppliers conducted by AirPlus International.

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Ancillary Fee Headaches Intensify For Travel Buyers

Posted in Blog, The Wire by AirPlus US Team
Tags: Ancillary Fees, The Wire

Hotels, car rental companies and TMCs continue to charge fees, but it’s the airline fees that have a larger impact on travel management today.

The Department of Transportation in early May released final figures for 2009 airline ancillary fee revenues. The report showed that as a group United States airlines pulled in $7.8 billion in ancillary fees, a large increase over the $5.5 billion collected in 2008. That increase alone makes it clear why more than 72 percent of respondents to AirPlus International’s The Wire survey last month chose airlines as the supplier category most affecting their travel budgets with fees. DOT numbers, however, do not tell the entire story.

 

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