If the industry in 2012 continued to claim that travel buyers
weren’t that interested in program alternatives like Concur’s Open Booking
Initiative, by 2013 it would become a much harder argument to make. Managed
travel seemed to be obsessing over the idea that bookings made outside of
approved program channels might offer better value—and it was clear that at least
part of the time they were offering better pricing than a managed program could
negotiate, whether agency rates or directly negotiated.
A few startups were pushing into the managed travel space in
2013 to get at the pricing issue. Tripbam, founded by Steve Reynolds in October
2012 to re-shop corporate hotel bookings for better rates, was winning its
first corporate…
