As this feature looks at who has had the greatest influence in business travel technology over the past year, we make no excuses for including the late co-founder of Apple, who died from pancreatic cancer in early October. Steve Jobs was named more times by our panellists than anyone else, largely for his work in delivering iPhones and iPads into the hands of the world’s business travellers. Simon Mclean of Click Travel said: “The iPhone has changed people’s lives and its momentum in the business world is increasing all the time. The way people interact with each other and the services they use have been changed by the iPhone forever, and that will inevitably impact the way people organise their travel – both on a personal level and in business travel.” Consultant Andrew Solum listed Jobs “for his technology skills, bringing apps to the forefront of technology for the iPad and iPhone, and opening up yet further opportunities for the travel segment.” Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and adopted at birth. He started to work for videogame manufacturer Atari in his teens. Apple was founded by Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne (who later sold his share to the two Steves for $800) in Jobs’ adopted parents’ garage in Los Altos, California. Over the years since then, Apple has created a number of game-changing devices, leading up to the recent launch of the latest version of the iPhone, the 4S. In its most recent financial quarter, the company sold more than 17 million iPhones, 11m iPads, 6m iPods and 4m Mac computers.
STEVE SINGH CEO, CONCUR
The name of Concur and its CEO Steve Singh came up again and again among our panellists.
What drew their admiration was the company’s ability to focus on detail in order to develop the best solution for end-to-end travel and expense (T&E) processing.
Concur was founded in 1993 by
Steve’s brother Rajeev and Mike Hilton, now executive vice-president of marketing for the company, with a focus on saving companies’ money through process automation in the area of expense management. In 1996 the company drafted in Steve, who had been a general manager at IT company Symantec, to be its CEO. Since then, the company has grown to the point where it handles a claimed 10 per cent of the world’s T&E spend, which it puts at $35 billion.
Along the way it has changed shape
under Steve Singh’s direction, acquiring Outtask and its Cliqbook online booking technology in 2006 and Tripit, the itinerary management technology company, in 2011.
Technology
Technology is one of the most powerful forces driving the changes we’re seeing in business travel. So who are the most influential people in this field? Mark Frary reports
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LARRY PAGE CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE, GOOGLE Google’s co-founder was another name that appeared numerously in our panel’s inclusions. Over the years, Google has been astonishingly successful, particularly at generating revenue from ads alongside its search results, but it is its other activities that have drawn admiration from our panellists. They cited Google Maps and Earth, which have changed the landscape of hotel booking, as well as its Google Translate API, enabling travel companies to serve up international versions of their websites with little in the way of investment. Click Travel’s Simon Mclean said:
“Google’s biggest impact on our industry has been the services they have delivered. Take Google Maps – the ubiquitous standard for delivering mapping, directions and geolocation services that is now embedded into many online business travel services.” Google has only just got started in this area, and many of our panel pointed to Google’s acquisition of ITA and its fare search technology. Whether it will disrupt the business travel sector in the same way that it has other industries remains to be seen. Page co-founded Google at Stanford
University with Sergey Brin in 1998, and returned as CEO this year after the departure of Eric Schimdt who had held the role for the past 10 years.