Cities are the ultimate knowledge hubs. From Dallas to Dubai, we travel to metropolitan centers to congregate, sign deals over coffee and learn insights in auditoriums. Cities have also been the hardest hit in recent months and our adoration with these complex, crowded but stimulating and vibrant centers has been put on pause.

Cities will be where we reconnect with clients and colleagues, where we go to hear big ideas on big stages, and forge personal relationships on restaurant patios. Cities’ importance must be celebrated and embraced as business travel returns, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be changes to the business travel destinations.

We sat down with Greg Oates, SVP Innovation at MMGY NextFactor and Tom Hall, VP of Experiences at Lonely Planet, to talk through cities’ role as business travel destinations and why embracing them to forge in-person connections is the future of business.

One of the perks of frequent business travel is the ability to rack up airline and hotel points that can be used for upgrades and free hotel stays and tickets. The loyalty game has changed dramatically over the past few years and especially in recent months.

As business travel resumes, business travelers are going to rethink their loyalty strategies and travel managers will want to consider their importance in rethinking policies that drive adoption.

We sat down with Ron Davis, Director of Loyalty  at Radisson Hotel Group, Dave Canty, Partner, New World Loyalty, and  Grant Martin, Director of Product Marketing at TripActions, to talk through recent loyalty changes and how business travelers and travel managers should think about loyalty moving forward.

Finance, operations, HR, risk and travel managers are starting to think through how they best support their organizations when business travel inevitably resumes -- from ensuring the health and safety of traveling employees to helping their organizations control costs.

COVID-19 forced many organizations around the world to halt travel and cancel nearly all future flight bookings. The vast majority of these tickets were non-refundable, which typically would result in lost value. However, given the unprecedented times, most airlines adjusted their policies to offer waivers so the value of these tickets could be used towards future bookings.

Now, imagine the challenge of keeping track of unused tickets and waivers across thousands or hundreds of thousands of travelers in any given company. In some cases, organizations have millions and millions of dollars in what now amounts to prepaid travel credits.

How can they track and manage these to ensure no company money is left on the table? How can they effectively help their organizations control costs and save money as business travel resumes?

In this episode of Open for Business, we sit down with Paul Huang, Global Director of Travel Operations at TripActions, to look at the unused ticket and waiver dilemma facing many organizations and their travel managers today.

Air travel is forever changed, which may be good news for business travelers. Everything from airport security to seat width is up for innovation as industry leaders diligently think through how to make air travel safer for business travelers around the world. We’re already seeing signs of change with mask mandates and new kinds of security checks.

As business travel resumes, business travelers will want to prepare for a new way of moving through the skies, and travel managers are tasked with preparing them as much as possible. There is also a potential for radical shifts in security, boarding, and in-flight operations that could ultimately position the air travel experience to become better than ever before.

We sit down with Scott Mayerowitz, Executive Editorial Director at The Points Guy, and Skift Aviation Business Editor Brian Sumers to understand how airports and the air travel experience will change for business travelers and those responsible for corporate travel management.

This episode of Open for Business explores the new responsibilities that HR and People teams have as organizations prepare to resume business travel. COVID-19 has shifted the workplace in many ways -- and highlighted the importance of culture in fortifying and supporting employees during unexpected interruptions. As traveling employees return to the road and office, HR and people teams will play an even more important role in caring for their employees. They must continue to create a purposeful culture, provide support as employees shift from WFH schedules, and establish health and safety practices.

We sat down with Leslie Kurkjian Crowe, Chief People Officer at TripActions, to understand where and how HR and business travel now intersect more than ever moving forward.

What happens when business travel stops? And more importantly, how do we prepare for when it resumes?

This episode looks at how travel managers continue driving value with business travel on pause. While it might seem that the travel manager role becomes redundant when business travel stops, companies need their travel managers now more than ever.  Travel managers are preparing their organizations and travelers for when business travel inevitably resumes. They are ensuring that their programs and policies prioritize traveler health and safety while controlling costs and saving money.

Our guests this week are Caroline Strachan, managing partner at Festive Road, and Mira Rosenzweig, Enterprise Customer Success Manager at TripActions and previous director of travel services at KBB Partners. Together, they’ll help us understand how travel managers can prepare their organizations to get back to business and business travel safely.

The corporate travel and expense community has a unique opportunity -- a universal pause on travel -- to reassess our relationship to wellness on an individual and organizational level. Our community of executive leaders, travel managers and road warriors are eager to get back out on the road, but want to do so in a way that supports their health, safety, well-being and productivity so they can leverage those critical in-person connections to build relationships, close deals, and drive growth.

Joining us this week is Marcey Rader, productivity coach and founder of Work Well. Play More!, Reiner Halbertsma, co-founder of travel wellness brand Local Time, and Matthew Holmann, founder of Simpila and the Business Travel Wellbeing Community.