Business Travel Rockstar Interview - Steve Reynolds

Steve Reynolds - CEO at CorpTravelTech

Let's start with something about you. How did you start your professional career and how did you get into the travel industry?

My entry into travel was actually quite accidental. I began my career as a consultant at Ernst & Young, and my very first assignment was with a travel agency in Houston, Texas, called LifeGo Travel. At the time, I wasn’t planning a career in travel at all — it just happened to be the project I was staffed on.

Along with a few colleagues, I started developing software to help the agency operate more efficiently. That software really took off. LifeGo grew rapidly — from roughly 300 million $ in sales to nearly 3 billion $ in about four years. Early on, the agency owner, Barney Cogan, told us he was tired of paying consulting fees and asked if we wanted to become employees. That didn’t excite us much — but when the conversation turned into starting a company together, everything changed.

That’s how Competitive Technologies (CTI) was born. We grew to around 20–25 people and eventually sold the company to American Express when LifeGo itself was acquired. That was the early 1990s — and ever since then, I’ve been deeply embedded in travel technology. I’ve tried more than once to leave the industry, but somehow I always get pulled back in.

Is there something that particularly fascinates you about this industry?

What’s always fascinated me about corporate travel is the contrast between how advanced it once was and how slowly it has evolved since. Early on, corporate travel was considered high-tech — GDSs, mainframe systems, global distribution. It received a lot of attention.

But then things stagnated. In my opinion, the industry became complacent. If you were to design the corporate travel ecosystem from scratch today, it would look nothing like what we have now. You wouldn’t rely on the same GDS structures. TMCs would operate very differently. Distribution would be far more streamlined.

The fact that the industry continues to rely on inefficient legacy processes — despite enormous technological potential — has always intrigued me. And for someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, inefficiency equals opportunity.

Who or what has inspired you and/or continues to do so today? 

I’ve been very fortunate to work with people who genuinely shaped my thinking and career. One of the earliest was Eddie Martin, who remains both a mentor and a close personal friend. He’s incredibly smart and has always been someone I could learn from.

Later on, I worked with Danny Hood, who sadly has since passed away. He was a visionary leader — a great boss and someone who saw possibilities others didn’t. My long-time technology partner, Caleb Blanton, has also been a huge influence. Beyond being technically brilliant, he’s been a trusted friend and advocate.

There are many others along the way — people I worked with across multiple companies — who played key roles in making those ventures successful. Travel tech is very much a team sport.

What has been your favourite experience during your professional career to date?

Looking back over more than 40 years in the industry, one of the most satisfying experiences was the success of TripBAM. It was a product focused on hotel and airfare re-shopping, contract auditing, and analytics — and it fundamentally challenged long-standing assumptions in corporate travel.

Corporate buyers loved it because it delivered real, measurable savings and exposed issues in negotiated contracts that were often not being applied correctly. Hoteliers, airlines, and many TMCs didn’t love it — which was a pretty good sign we were onto something.

TripBAM sold extremely well in the U.S. and gained traction in Europe as well. We eventually sold the company in July 2023. Seeing how much value it created — for customers and for the team — was incredibly rewarding.

Before that, there were many other highlights: running one of the leading online booking tools of its time, building the dominant mid-office system in the U.S., pioneering SaaS models long before they were common, and launching one of the first desktop reporting tools that gave corporate buyers direct access to clean, usable data. The common theme across all of them was innovation and impact.

In your opinion, what is the greatest achievement in travel technology since the turn of the millennium?

Without a doubt, online booking tools. They completely transformed the industry by automating the majority of transactions. Today, agents primarily handle complex international itineraries or VIP travel — whereas everything else is self-service.

That shift fundamentally changed cost structures, workflows, and expectations in corporate travel. Nothing else has had a comparable impact.

Do you have a favourite among the technologies that have been developed for the travel industry? 

TripBAM stands out — not just because it was my own product, but because of how disruptive it was. At the time, no one was auditing or re-shopping hotel rates in a systematic way. Most companies simply assumed that negotiated rates were always applied and always the best available option.

We proved that assumption wrong — often by a significant margin. Being first in that space and watching it fundamentally change buyer behavior is something I’m particularly proud of.

What would you recommend to newcomers to the industry in terms of technology?

Find real pain points — especially for corporate buyers. While working for TMCs can offer scale, the margins are thin. Corporate buyers, on the other hand, have budgets and will pay for solutions that deliver proven value and savings.

And don’t be afraid to disrupt legacy models. If GDSs or TMCs are uncomfortable with what you’re building, that’s often a sign you’re challenging the status quo in a meaningful way. Discomfort usually means innovation.

Where do you currently see the biggest and most important challenges in the industry? Do you have any thoughts on how you would tackle them?

Legacy distribution remains the biggest challenge. Many GDSs and traditional TMC models are struggling — financially and structurally. At the same time, travelers increasingly want to book directly with suppliers.

The solution lies in enabling supplier-direct bookings while still capturing the data that corporate programs need — duty of care, policy compliance, analytics, and reporting. There are companies working toward this vision, and progress is being made, but not as quickly as the industry needs.

That’s where I see the greatest opportunity right now.

Quick-Fire Fragen

Who is the next business travel rock star we should interview?

Jim Davidson, Vice Chairman Accelya Group. He’s a great industry mind and would make for a fantastic interview.