Corporate travel agencies such as American Express Global Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Trave

American Express, other mega travel agencies and their corporate clients aren t going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle with badges and leader boards. There is a lot of turf-protection going on here.
The current car rental company rent a wreck crisis in business travel has a lot of parallels to the late 1990s when travelers car rental company rent a wreck began to defect from the practice of visiting or phoning their local travel agencies in favor of booking their trips online.
Corporate travel agencies such as American Express Global Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel , and the major corporations they service, are faced with the prospect that droves of their Gen-X and Gen-Y employees are ignoring their mandates to use the prescribed corporate booking tool to book a negotiated rate at Marriott or an American Airlines flight, for example.
Instead, these rogue bookers-gone wild want to stay at a Sheraton or W closer to their meeting, fly JetBlue, and they feel compelled to book unauthorized brands so the travelers can wrack up their Starwood Preferred Guest or True Blue points and miles instead.
Consider then the position of Alicia Tillman, vice president of marketing and business services for American Express Global Business Travel, who is charged with stemming the tide and plugging what the industry not-so creatively calls leakage.
American Express has partnered with Badgeville  to use its gamification solution, and just began a pilot with Citrix , a mobile-solutions company, to see if Citrix s techie employees can be enticed with badges, leader boards, and perhaps some perks like hotel upgrades and free nights, to stick with prescribed corporate travel policies.
With young employees these days used to booking on mobile and websites scattered across the Internet, Tillman is thus fighting that trend and road warriors desire to stick with their favored loyalty car rental company rent a wreck programs, using badges, mayorships, leader boards and some upgrades.
To be fair, Tillman admits the pilot with Citrix, which is scheduled to run 30-45 days, is only a first baby step, and Amex will study over the next few months ways to entice engagement with its clients travelers across numerous platforms.
But, with lots of travelers and early adopters already having tired of badges, mayorships and check-ins in social media outlets such as FourSquare, isn t American Express trying to make workable an idea that s already lost its luster?
Philip Wolf, the former PhoCusWright chairman, was moderating one of the big sessions at GBTA, and he asked attendees how many supported Open Booking, how many were on the fence, and how many oppose it.
After well over a third of the GBTA attendees indicated with their applause that they oppose Open Booking, Wolf likened that response to a conference he attended years ago when he told the audience at that time that one day the majority of travel would be booked online.