All eggs in one basket? Not anymore

Jack Ramsey is CEO of travel tech provider TripStax

For years corporate buyers handling travel for some of the world’s largest businesses have had to grapple with decisions on how best to manage a global programme.

During the noughties and the tens, many buyers adopted a consolidated travel programme whereby one of the (then) big four/five global TMCs would service them either through owned entities, partner networks and/or central servicing hubs in countries where labour was cheap.

Other buyers elected to bring their programmes inhouse and created mini-agencies of their own – the CTD (Corporate Travel Department) model.

Unbeknown to buyers at the time, the idea of consolidating their global travel programme was actually as a result of restrictive technology and clever marketing. In order to manage an effective global programme, buyers relied on the mega TMCs and their oligopoly of GDS partners to manage all the pre- and post-booking data movements. 

All travel content – in other words the availability and fares/rates for bookable travel product – was provided by the GDS channel and thus all the post-booking data was made available through these channels too. A buyer couldn’t have a global programme without it, unless they had the means to build their own data warehouses, interconnect with the archaic ecosystem and consolidate and leverage their own data inhouse.

There were of course corporate booking tools which emerged early in this period. But let’s not forget that 99 per cent of all transactions made through these user interfaces were still predicated on the legacy TMC/GDS methodology.

All eggs were in one basket, so to speak.

So, what happens when the eggs hatch and start to jump out of the basket? The consolidated model, which relies on a single basket, starts to be significantly tested. I don’t know if anyone reading this has experienced holding a freshly laid egg versus then trying to catch the bird that has laid it. Two very different things! The oligopoly starts frantically chasing birds around, without focusing on reinventing the basket, while the birds are off hunting for exciting new environments to grow up in.

So as buyers reflect on this changing landscape, do all of them sit and wait for the oligopoly to regain a stranglehold over their legacy model? No. Many buyers look at the benefit of deconsolidation and leveraging what suppliers have to offer directly, both locally and via alternative distribution channels.

For those who continue to prefer the idea of a globally consolidated programme, just without the hinderances of the old model, they sign up with the Navan’s and Travelperk’s of the world, whose primary content channels are not the GDS.  However, these snazzy new beasts – which I hugely admire – are attributing a portion of their revenues to acquiring traditional TMCs, so perhaps this new model is still finding its feet?

For those who fly the flag of ripping up the old script and taking advantage of a localised model, what do they do about the reliance they once had on a single TMC and the GDSs for all their post-booking data requirements? They engage with new technologies that actually have a completely impartial opinion on where a booking is being made.

Now that we are in 2025, the decisions that buyers need to make expand far beyond whether to consolidate globally or keep things localised, based on the historical TMC/GDS model. The emergence of new technology that allows them to control their own flocks is redefining how travel is managed. The question is, are buyers aware enough of what’s available to them and how quickly do they want to take advantage of it?

Think about the energy that was once put into managing interconnectivity, data accuracy, unnecessary data points (designed to complicate and maintain reliance on the old guard), limited and frustrating user experiences and so on. All of this can now be washed away.

Buyers can focus on the travel programme itself, not the complexity behind it. Suppliers can push their content via the channels that work best for them. The middlemen can focus on their tired commercial frameworks and upgrading their tech to enable better interaction between supply and demand. And the new technology players will give the industry the room it needs to jump up the leaderboard on innovation and transformation.