{"id":744050,"date":"2026-02-05T13:11:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/744050\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T13:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:11:18","slug":"the-long-road-to-emerald-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/744050\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Road to Emerald City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kintela's<\/a>Kintela’s Martin Ferguson paints an Oz-like picture of managed travel and challenges the industry to have the confidence to avoid its own mirage. <\/p>\n

There is a particular kind of interest swirling
\naround the managed business travel sector. The investment community is watching
\nclosely, trying to understand whether the industry is genuinely mid-transition
\nor simply better at talking about change than delivering it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From the outside, the logic behind the
\ncurrent direction of travel seems easy to understand. Travel, expense, payments
\nand data belong together. That is where the corporate authority, particularly
\nin the global multinational segment, sits. It is where governance and control
\ncombine. In this world, scale matters in a way standalone tools struggle to
\nmatch, which helps explain why large platforms attract intense scrutiny, and
\nwhy alliances and acquisitions tend to be positioned as long-term structural
\nplays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That logic mirrors how organisations
\nactually operate and how finance leaders think about risk, compliance and
\nspend. The destination itself is clear enough. What\u2019s often glossed over is how
\ntough the journey is to actually get there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Emerald City starts to take shape here. A place where booking, expense, payments and data dance in formation like the Munchkins.”<\/p>\n

The industry, for now, lives in an
\nuncomfortable halfway house. Supplier economics still shape behaviour, even as
\nthe vocabulary shifts to \u201cplatforms\u201d and \u201corchestration\u201d. Many buyers still
\ntreat travel as a commodity while asking for stronger duty of care, cleaner
\ndata and a better traveller experience. Technology promises simplification but often
\nadds another layer that still has to be implemented, maintained and paid for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tension between ambition and delivery depends
\non scale, but it is felt just as acutely by mid-market, SME buyers and regional
\nagencies who usually have to absorb complexity created by the bigger players.
\nThat makes change slower and more vulnerable than most tech roadmaps care to
\nadmit. Which helps explain why compelling stories are often told well before
\nthe work is finished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Building the Emerald City?<\/p>\n

The Emerald City starts to take shape here.
\nA place where booking, expense, payments and data dance in formation like the
\nMunchkins. Compliance becomes more like a set of intelligent guardrails rather
\nthan a tornado of reminders. Insights matter as much as the transactions
\nthemselves. The yellow brick road is the narrative that leads there. It is persuasive
\nand easy to present but it skips a number of difficult miles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Every transformation story eventually meets
\nits Wicked Witch. In our industry, the witch is spin and idealism. It\u2019s
\nLinkedIn trolls and instant solutions. Launches designed to reassure investors
\nand unsettle competitors. The idealism works for a while, but then you can\u2019t
\nescape reality. In reality, that means complex migration plans, operational
\nfriction and buyers applying pressure by asking simple questions: does it work?
\nCan it be rolled out where I need it? Does it improve compliance without
\nbreaking my programme? Will it make my travellers happier?<\/p>\n

Defending the Lion<\/p>\n

The more interesting character, however, is
\nthe lion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lion carries strength that the story
\nrarely acknowledges. The managed travel sector sometimes looks coy about its
\nown role. It gets drawn in by language that sounds sleeker, more modern and
\nmore valuable. Software. Platform. Fintech adjacent. AI led. These are labels
\nthat help with valuation stories but divert attention away from the craft that
\nTony Pilcher and his peers, the original travel managers, pioneered decades ago
\nand which is still practised today. What is often missing is the courage to
\ndefend that craft openly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Orchestration at scale. Managing a type of
\ncomplexity many organisations would, or do, prefer to ignore, while balancing
\ncommercial tensions between buyers and suppliers. Keeping programmes working in
\nan uncertain world. Much of the work is unglamorous and even taken for granted.
\nOr more bluntly: not paid for. As more processes are standardised, judgement,
\nexperience and pragmatic intervention become the premium.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The irony is that the lion already has much
\nof what Emerald City needs. Scale and reach. Deep operational knowledge.
\nCustomer relationships. Courage, it seems, is the missing ingredient. When that
\nwavers, we see leaders pivot to language that weakens the sector\u2019s connection
\nto its roots. And the industry starts doubting the value of what it already
\ndelivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Confidence to Drive Sustainable Change<\/p>\n

Comparisons with Waiting for Godot
\nbecome harder to ignore. The future always sits just a short distance ahead.
\nAnother roadmap or integration. Another press release about what comes next.
\nEveryone prepares and waits, while at the same time the here and now keeps
\nbuilding momentum. Buyers keep parsing through the noise. Teams keep absorbing
\nchange and credibility ebbs away through small misses rather than dramatic
\nfailures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Integration, though, still deserves serious
\ncommitment. It also demands honesty about the work. Integrated finance, expense
\nand travel arrive through products that work in unison, migrations that succeed
\nat enterprise scale, and, to borrow slightly from Caroline Strachan, a steady
\nrebuilding of trust. Organisations need time to adapt, and programmes need
\nstability while change is introduced. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The managed business travel sector should
\nbenefit from clarity about its own relevance, a better understanding of what
\nactually creates customer value, and the confidence to work at the pace real
\norganisations can sustain. Emerald City is reached on foot. The road there is
\nas real as the effort required to get there. Are we prepared to go the distance
\nwithout losing ourselves on the way? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kintela’s Martin Ferguson paints an Oz-like picture of managed travel and challenges the industry to have the confidence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[5762,2000,299,5187],"class_list":["post-744050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-columnists","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116018196309091262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}