Business travel

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. 

On 23 November, Appart'City opens the Appart'City Strasbourg Aéroport residence. This new address - the 117th - will welcome business travellers just a quarter of an hour from the city centre.

Kayak.fr tried its hand at a tedious but extremely useful exercise for these business traveller-sprinters, whose busy schedules limit the margin for error at the airport to the bare minimum. The travel comparison website has published a table comparing the average walking time between security checkpoints and boarding gates at several major European airports. 

From January 2015, Nice Côte d'Azur Airport will be embarking on a major renovation programme for Terminals 1 and 2, with the aim of creating, by 2017, "a comfort area that meets the standards of a leading European airport, with the added bonus of the Riviera's touch". Airport officials have just unveiled the details of this ambitious project.

Crowne Plaza is launching a new room concept specially designed to meet the changing needs of business travellers.

City meetings or country seminars... When it comes to planning an event, organisers are faced with this alternative. Despite overloaded diaries, companies are not hesitating to go green to encourage cohesion and sharing. But without straying too far from their roots...

easyJet's French catalogue is being expanded with the opening of eleven new routes from France, including seven scheduled connections in 2015, and several top business destinations.

Emirates intends to offer free Wi-Fi on board "as soon as possible". The airline is backing its strategy with an annual investment of over 20 million dollars.

With its new SnapCar Classic business range, the VTC specialist for business customers aims to shake up an increasingly coveted market by combining "premium quality" with "aggressive pricing". Its priority target: business travellers to and from airports.

A few hours before the start of the strike action due to begin at 7pm on Monday 3 November, SNCF has published reassuring traffic forecasts, with "normal" to "near-normal" traffic.

British Airways is moving to real-time information, with push notifications sent via the airline's application, which will focus on personalising the service by using iBeacon technology. 

Sabre's inventory is growing: GDS has signed an agreement with La Compagnie, the new "100% business" transatlantic carrier between Paris and New York.

Capitaine Train has published an infographic listing the reasons why French travellers take the TGV. The document, based on the "National Transport and Travel Survey", estimates that 36.2% of business customers use the high-speed network.

Cédric Pastour spoke on Thursday about Aigle Azur's new strategic direction. The airline's Chairman and CEO confirmed that operations on the Paris-Moscow route would be suspended, and that the Paris-Beijing project would be postponed.

Korean Air is extending its cooperation with one of the 29 airlines linked to the Korean carrier by code-share agreements: LAN.

Business travel will be disrupted once again this week on the Lufthansa network. The strike called by the Vereinigung Cockpit union begins this Monday afternoon, and has been extended to long-haul flights.

While all the experts agree that Asia will continue to drive growth in air transport over the next few years, the continent is not free from turbulence, mainly due to increased competition, political factors and the slowdown in the Chinese economy.

Qantas is preparing its move to a new area dedicated to the Australian airline at Perth airport, by starting construction of a new business lounge for domestic flights.

Air France announced on 16 September that it had reached an agreement with the pilots' unions to develop Transavia France. Management describes this as a "balanced solution, the fruit of responsible and peaceful social dialogue".

The MICE offering is gaining momentum at oneworld, which has just made official further enhancements to the 'oneworld events' programme, both in terms of pricing and network, almost a year and a half after the solution was launched in May 2013.