Amex GBT Goals to Shed ‘Legacy TMC’ Label

While American Express Global Business Travel generally gets
classified with “legacy” travel management companies, the company’s
executives of late have been pushing back on that classification. Speaking
last year at The Beat Live, for example, CEO Paul Abbott said being
referred to as a “legacy” or “establishment” TMC was “self-serving
rubbish.” Amex GBT EVP of global clients and Americas general manager
David Reimer spoke with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker during the recent
Global Business Travel Association annual convention in Atlanta about the
company’s transition to a “software and service company,” along with
an update on staffing, sustainability efforts and its new accessibility
offering. Edited excerpts follow.

[Editor’s note: This interview took place a
week before Amex
GBT’s announcement that it was pushing back the projected completion
date of its acquisition of CWT as U.K. regulators conduct a deeper probe on its
market impact. Given the additional context, questions related to the
acquisition were not included in the transcription.]

BTN: Have you completed staffing recovery coming out
of the pandemic?

David Reimer: Our business is in the best possible
shape. Our access to talent has never been better. Our attrition rates from a
servicing point of view are at the lowest they’ve ever been. We are getting and
maintaining the best talent in the industry. It’s so rewarding to turn up this
week here [at the GBTA conference] and hear from every single one of our customers
about the phenomenal job our teams did in accommodating them in the
issues of the past week. I would tell you if I’d heard something else, but
I just haven’t. There’s always talk about product, about technology, about AI, but
I think the human element of business travel and travel in general is just such
an important part. Being able to work through this week, accommodate customers,
and get them on other airlines, get them to their meetings and get them home, having
the talent in the industry to go do that is the exclamation mark in terms of servicing,
where it’s at and having the right talent. 

BTN: Over the past few years, we heard of a reticence
from some on returning to the travel industry. Is that still the case?

Reimer: We’re beyond that. Overwhelmingly, people are
returning. The are passionate about service, what we are delivering for our customers.
We are over that very quickly. If I look at GBT specifically, some would like
to categorize us as a travel management company. We are no longer a travel management
company. We are a software and service company, and that is what we do in the B-to-B
space. That’s also the opportunity that really allows us to attract different
people. We have now over 1,000 developers with fingers on keyboards developing
stuff, and that’s a marked change over the last several years, and we’re continuing
to build that out. It’s not just about somebody picking up the phone. We are a
software and services business, and that is what we do, whether that be through
what we’re delivering to customer with Egencia or Neo, but that is absolutely
what we’re focusing on. 

BTN: Are you seeing a greater move by your customers
to your own technology?

Reimer: Ultimately, what we think about is really
providing unrivaled choice for customers and getting the content through our marketplace.
The reason we talk about choice is it’s not just important to have that own
technology but to provide choice. If I think about that choice, some customers
will want to go and configure their own program. That’s the GBT Select offering,
to go out with Concur and a number of different products: Cytric, GetThere. There’
a whole bunch where people can go and bespoke their own program. If you have a
look at someone who’s got relatively less complex requirements, they can go out
and use the Egencia product to do that. If you think about what we have with
Neo as a solution is really being able to invest in that control. With Egencia
and Neo, we can do that with both those products. We can move faster on things
like [New Distribution Capability] and innovation in general on user
experience, and we have that direct access with our customers, and we listen to
that feedback. That really allows us to make sure we have the best products in
the industry. We still have 79 percent of our transactions online. Sixty percent
of those are on our product platform, Neo and Egencia, but 40 percent is a
really important number to us and our customers, and GBT will continue to offer
that choice. 

BTN: What’s your progress report with NDC?

Reimer: I couldn’t be prouder on the progress report.
We’ve got over 20 airlines active in terms of our NDC program. We’ve got over
10,000 customers accessing that through Neo and Egencia, both online and
offline channels. This is something we remain committed to. We are offering
that content. Where we want to be and our role is to make sure we are in a position
where a customer doesn’t care whether it’s an EDIFACT fare or NDC content. Our
job is to simplify that and offer that broad array of content.

BTN: Has customer adoption been in line with your
expectations?

Reimer: I would say it’s broadly in line with expectations
whether they’re selecting those fares or not. We don’t really care. We just
want to serve it up to the customer. They’ll have their policy, and the traveler
will be able to make the decision about what works for them. That could be EDIFACT
or that could be NDC. The end traveler wants choice and to travel in the most
efficient and cost-effective manner, and that’s our mission. 

BTN: What are some of your key projects related to
AI?

Reimer: We’ve created
a separate team. AI is not foreign to GBT, whether it’s in terms of
providing choice to customers, how we’re displaying content—it’s been around
for a long time. As the technology is evolving, the way we’re really thinking
about through this new group is how do we improve customer service. How do we
use it in a customer service environment to allow agents to deliver a better
experience, to have them focused on what matters in those moments of truth when
customer need them the most? There’s financial—what are the financial capabilities
within GBT. Also, from an engineering perspective, there’s a lot of great tools
we’ve adopted and use cases for developing faster and better quality, making
sure our employees have those tools. Then, we’re working through number of different
use cases at a customer level, where it would be automation. This isn’t a destination.
This is something that is here. When people are using our technology, using AI
to give people choice to where we’re looking at data of people who have
traveled within their organizations with similar profiles to give them choices,
or based on their own profiles, that is all AI-enabled. The proactive traveler
care that we do, being able to notify and reach out to customers is also
AI-enabled. The choices we serve up during disruption are AI-enabled. So, we
have a nice balance in terms of focusing across those areas.

BTN: How has your role evolved with your clients’
sustainability efforts?

Reimer: With sustainability, nobody’s claiming
victory. I see a continued commitment from broadly the industry and specifically
from all of our customers, so it remains an absolutely focus area. This is
truly an area where we need to come together as an industry. What customers are
asking for is how to they go about meeting their net zero targets for 2030 or
2050. Specifically for them, they’re thinking about how they’re educating the travelers
at point of sale. I see customers taking a keener interest in aircraft, how
much is somebody burning on a particular flight; what does that mean? Certainly
reporting and visibility, there’s a huge amount of importance. I think we led
the industry with the partnership with Shell to come up with the
Avelia product. Really, it’s going to take multiple solutions across the
industry to solve this, but that’s been an interesting one for both of us. It
does allow a different way for accounting for [sustainable aviation fuel] as an
offset, being able to track that in a unique way and report against it. That’s
not going away anytime soon, and nor should it. We’re all world citizens of a
planet that needs our help, and it’s our job to go out and address it. 

BTN: Have you seen any signs that customer interest
in sustainability is waning?

Reimer: I don’t think it has. What we’re seeing from customers
is they’re interested in navigating in their own organization, trying to work
out who the stakeholders are from a travel perspective, who I should go talk to
and how should I do that. If you’re in a professional services firm, that could
be different from a manufacturing firm. We spoke at the need as the industry
continues to evolve and change to elevating the conversation at a C-suite
level. We’re just starting to see the beginning of it. As dates and targets
come due, people are going to put more emphasis on it. We’ve held the interest
as an industry, but as those targets come, you’re going to see a more
aggressive push for companies to want to understand how they’re abating emissions
and solving for their company targets.

BTN: You launched a
new accessibility services offering this year. How has that been
progressing?

Reimer: We’re progressed that solution with more
companies. That’s another key one as an industry, because it’s really important
if somebody does have an accessibility issue and matching that whether it be
through the airlines or hotel rooms, and understanding the different types of things
you’re trying to solve for. Getting visibility to travelers at the point of
sale is really important, make sure you have bespoke solutions for companies
who are required to access that content. If you think about the great period of
fragmentation we have in content from hotels, a particular room night not just
be a room that requires disability access but a room that can’t be near the
elevator for noise sensitively issues. It’s knowing that but then also being
able to access that content to view it. There’s a whole lot more that needs to
be done. I know GBTA has championed that, and so have some of our customers. Andrew
Slaiby at Raytheon is doing a great job to bring that together at an industry
level. We’ve got some wonderful examples with Google and others where we’ve
been able to create bespoke solutions that allows them to add that offering to
their employees. It doesn’t matter what the accessibility issue is. It does
give them that option to travel and make them feel more comfortable to travel
to know they are going to be accommodated and get the support they need to have
an effective trip. There’s still a long way to go, but I’m really proud of what
we’ve done as a company.