2005: Business Travel Pricing Revolution

Business travel was back in full swing in the U.S. in 2005. “We
saw signs of that in 2004,” John Heilner told BTN in January 2005 when he was VP
of Management Alternatives, a Connecticut-based travel management consulting
firm that was acquired by GoldSpring Consulting in 2015. “We are no longer
seeing much of the ‘travel-only-when-necessary’ mandates from senior management.”
A CWT poll showed that 60 percent of travel managers expected more travel for
their company in 2005 compared to 2004.

[Note: Hurricane Katrina would upend travel for some weeks in September; meetings in Louisiana and the surrounding region would suffer terrible losses. Business travel, however, continued unabated across most of the region, with…