Business Travel News October 27, 2008 - (Page Cover1)

OCTOBER 27, 2008 INSIDE Hotels Melding Property Mgmt. Systems . . . 3 Mtg. Cancellation Clauses Tenuous . . . . . . . 4 Demand Woes Plague Limo Cos. . . . . . . . . . 6 BTN Research: Corp. Jet Demand Weakens. 10 GetThere Restarts Mobile Booking Plans . . 16 3 6 16 AMADEUS TAPS MOTOROLA BUILDING A GUTZ AS COO MTG. MANDATE POLICY RÉSUMÉ Scott Gutz returns Darrell Marciniak to fold, atop of deploys strategic North American ops. meetings program. CareerBuilder.com’s Razzino employs travel program. BTNonline.com BTN Bestows Int’l Honors On Intel BY AMON COHEN Financial Crisis Ices Corporate Travel BY JAY BOEHMER Business Travel News this month named Intel global strategic sourcing mobility manager Megan Stowe the 2008 International Travel Manager of the Year during the opening session of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives global conference in Rome. Editor-in-chief David Meyer MEGAN STOWE cited Stowe “for leading in the Int’l manager of the year development of a sophisticated, strategic, locally sensitive approach to multinational travel management, expanding its scope under the banner of mobility services and heading arguably the most active laboratory in testing the bounds of Continued on page 18 Fueled by a financial crisis that continued to broaden this month, many companies have enacted further plans to cut trips and draw down travel budgets. As some travel buyers instituted across-the-board travel freezes or flying reductions, others have further tightened the screws on policy and ramped up enforcements to shave costs. A Business Travel Coalition survey of 196 corporate travel buyers conducted this month showed nearly 26 percent of the respondents “implemented emergency travel cutbacks in the past weeks as a direct result of the financial crisis.” Of the respondents indicating newly implemented cuts, 34 percent characterized the cutbacks Travel’s Financial Fallout Companies implementing emergency travel cutbacks in past weeks as a direct result of the financial crisis No 74 Yes 26% Source: A Business Travel Coalition survey of 196 corporate travel buyers as “straight-up travel freezes,” while 19 percent said they took the form of mandates to reduce the number of trips. Continued on page 24 Booking Tools Automate Ticket Changes BY SETH HARRIS ONE-ON-ONE TSA ADMINISTRATOR KIP HAWLEY Online booking tool providers during the next several months plan to add capabilities that automatically process air ticket voids and exchanges, which could reduce service fees and processing times and offer greater price accuracy and transparency at the point of sale. As a result, travel buyers who long have awaited more robust automation of online ticket changes could push online usage even higher and signifi- Postmaster: Newspaper Handling/Periodicals Postaage cantly reduce their corporations’ unused ticket liability. GetThere this month announced a development partnership with ITA Software for use of ITA’s ReShop technology to replace its proprietary online ticket exchange platform released in 2004. The new exchange infrastructure enables GetThere to process exchanges, voids and refunds for both domestic and international points of sale, for partial itinContinued on page 8 Hawley Preps His Final Initiatives Kip Hawley, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, spoke with BTN senior editor Jay Boehmer this month to discuss the state of transportation security, and the soonto-be-implemented Secure Flight passenger prescreening system. BTN: What needs to be done before Secure Flight can launch next year? Kip Hawley: Secure Flight is within a couple of weeks of being announced with its final rule, so it is undergoing its final reviews within the administration. Then, the next step is to put it in the Federal Register, and it will give the road map from that point. We’ve had very good input from the people affected through the rule process. We know the concerns that people might have had, and when the rule comes out, those will be well addressed. BTN: The revamped Secure Flight changes the role for airlines and travel agencies. Does the final rule address that? Hawley: I can’t comment on the final rule until it’s final, but it does make it easier throughout the process. Certainly, for the airlines it will remove the burden of doing the work that they’d previously been doing. More imporContinued on page 25 ALL THE TOOLS TO SUCCEED ONE (COOL) RATE WINGATEHOTELS.COM | WG http://www.BTNonline.com http://www.WINGATEHOTELS.COM http://www.WINGATEHOTELS.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Business Travel News October 27, 2008

Business Travel News- October 27, 2008
Contents
Inside Track
Profiles In Travel Management
BTN Research
Forum
Lodging
Travel Management Tech
Destinations
Washington Wire

Business Travel News October 27, 2008