Business travel

Orient-Express, Trans-Siberian, Maharajas'Express, Eastern and Orient Express... In the collective imagination, these names conjure up dream journeys, unforgettable experiences to be enjoyed at least once in your life!

Easyjet will be linking Paris CDG airport with Tel Aviv airport three times a week from 30 March 2015. A crucial new route in the business segment, which should contribute to easyJet's ambitious plans in Israel, where easyJet intends to establish itself as the second largest airline.

Accor and Huazhu (China Lodging) have entered into a strategic partnership to create a hotel giant in China. At the heart of this alliance: a master franchise agreement for Accor's economy and mid-range hotels, a highly ambitious development plan for 350 to 400 new hotels and the combination of loyalty programmes.

Business people can praise them or criticise them, but it is now a well-established fact that the major hubs have become indispensable. These powerful hubs - some sixty major airports worldwide in all - concentrate the bulk of air traffic, connecting the entire planet.

Business travellers in Tokyo now have free Wi-Fi access at 143 stations from 1 December. 

Easyjet will be launching a new business route on 29 March 2015, with daily connections between Paris Orly and Hamburg airports. François Bacchetta, easyJet's Managing Director for France, recalls the "two-year wait" that preceded the allocation of these new slots in Paris, and speaks of "tremendous growth potential".

The French VTC specialist for corporate customers is preparing to make further investments to attract business travellers, thanks to a €2 million fund-raising round.

With its PassForYou Entreprise card, Louvre Hotels offers a practical solution for managing business travel in France.

Already one of the busiest airports in Asia, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is planning major developments over the coming years.

Oneworld is adding new benefits - priority baggage delivery and extended deductibles - for the most loyal members of the alliance's member airlines.

Spanish hotel group Melia International is to invest €100 million to accelerate its digital transformation.

The travel industry is taking its turn with its digital plans. Hotel groups Accor, a month ago, and Melia International, this week, announced investments of hundreds of millions of euros in new technologies. For its part, the airline group LATAM went back over the 80 million euros that the group spent in 2014 on improving its high-tech services.

European sanctions had grounded Aeroflot's ambitions in the low-cost segment. At the end of May, the airline had chosen to serve Simferopol in Crimea as its first destination. However, the Russian airline, which is a member of SkyTeam, is not abandoning its desire to connect the country's regions with low-cost flights, in particular to compete with S7, the domestic leader which joined oneworld in 2010.

Hotel operator Wyndham Worldwide is accelerating its growth in India with the opening of a Ramada Encore and a Howard Johnson in Bangalore. Around thirty hotels of these...

In partnership with PressReader, the world leader in digital kiosks, the Accor group will be offering travellers a free press service accessible on their mobile devices.

The Kempinski luxury hotel group is opening two hotels in Qatar and China. Two establishments that stand out from the crowd thanks to their architecture and their capacity to host large-scale events.

415 billion dollars. It's a staggering figure. According to a survey by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), this is the total amount currently being invested in new airports and aviation infrastructure.

In its "Global Business Travel Forecast 2015", American Express Business Travel forecasts a slight increase in hotel rates in France for 2015. While prices on long-haul flights are also expected to rise, prices on domestic routes are expected to fall.

Mathias Warns is Vice-President of Corporate Sales for the HRS Group and a member of the Executive Committee. This business travel specialist, who has also worked for the HRG business travel agency, shares his expertise on the various trends in the business travel market - dematerialisation, mobile revolution, TMC, Airbnb, Booking, etc. - and defines HRS's ambitions on the international stage. - and sets out HRS's ambitions on the international stage. Interview.