August 4, 2020

Can Anyone Really Capture the SME Travel Market?

Tweet It was 1996 and I had just launched my consulting practice the prior September. On the agenda that day were consecutive calls with two startups, The Trip.com (not associated with the current iteration of the former C-Trip OTA) and BizTravel.com. Their mission was clear; to bring digitized travel management to the small/medium enterprise (SME) segment. And of course, the […]
July 24, 2020

Who Pays for the Needed Upgrade to Travel Distribution?

Tweet As we are in the midst of one of the most devastating events in the history of the travel industry, the Covid-19 pandemic, you might find it odd time for me to write a blog article about the need to upgrade technology infrastructure for travel distribution.  No one has any money, not the airlines, the GDS, the OTAs or […]
June 17, 2020

The Challenge of Being a Disruptor – Changing the Fundamentals of Travel Distribution and Settlement

Tweet It was a Sunday afternoon in 2013 and I did something I normally don’t do; I checked my Facebook feed (I’m not a big FB user). There I discovered a Meetup for Travel Startups scheduled for the upcoming week in San Francisco. It happened to coincide with an event where I was speaking earlier in the day, so I […]
June 1, 2020

Travel Tech Investment Opportunities in a Post Covid-19 World

Tweet With the industry at a near standstill due to the global pandemic, we often forget that over the last decade the travel industry experienced significant investment from Angels, Venture Capitalists and Private Equity, creating new travel/transportation unicorns (e.g. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, TripActions, Travel Perk and Oyo to name a few).  While post Covid-19 investors need to exercise caution, there […]
May 13, 2020

The Role of NDC in a Post Covid-19 World

Tweet The recent announcement that beginning June 1st Sabre agents will no longer be able to book Lufthansa flights on the Sabre GDS may be a signal of more changes to come in travel distribution as the industry slowly recovers from the global pandemic. Though the Sabre/Farelogix deal was cancelled, the Sabre/DOJ trial clearly uncovered the airlines continued commitment to […]
October 10, 2018

Connecting the Dots – NDC, Mobile and Personalized Offers

Tweet We are in the midst of a radical restructuring of air travel distribution. We have heard for the last 5 years that IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) will drive a new era of airline retailing.  In recent speeches at a variety of industry events,  Yanik Hoyles, Director of the NDC Program at IATA, emphasized that NDC is all about […]