Travel Distribution

May 5, 2022

Rethinking the Role of Online Booking Tools in Corporate Travel

Tweet Way back in the early 2000s I was asked to address a session at Oracle Corporation shortly after they had acquired e-Travel. I was introduced as the “grandfather” of self-booking tools. This title reflected my early adoption of this tech at Sun Microsystems and the fact that I authored the first analysis of OBTs back in the late 1990s. […]
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 10, 2020

As Travel Returns –Assessing Risk

Tweet I applaud the travel industry for its resilience in the face of the global pandemic. By all indications travel is slowly beginning to return.  To aid in the recovery some sophisticated tools have been developed to evaluate risk and track demand. These include the comprehensive travel recovery insights portal from BCG, ARC and 3Victors and the demand forecast portal […]
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 […]