2015 U.S.-Booked Air Volume: $102 million
Principal
Online Booking Tool: Concur
Travel
Principal
Expense Supplier: Concur Expense
Consolidated
U.S. TMC: American Express
Global Business Travel
BTN estimates that global
pharmaceutical and healthcare giant Abbott significantly increased its
U.S.-booked air spend in 2015 to $102 million, after restricting its air spend
in 2014 to $63 million during a broad cost-reduction effort and restructuring.
The company uses Concur for online booking in the United States, as well as
many countries in Europe and Asia/Pacific. Abbott directs U.S. travelers to use
the tool to book all domestic flights, as well as those to Canada and Puerto
Rico. Abbott also instructs U.S. travelers to book nonstop round-trip flights
to Europe online using Concur.
Abbott
increased total sales to $20.4 billion last year from $20.3 billion in 2014.
The company’s selling, general and administrative expenses, a line item that
includes business travel expenditures, increased to $6.8 billion from $6.5
billion the prior year. In 2015, Abbott completed the $3.4 billion acquisition
of Chilean firm CFR Pharmaceuticals and fully acquired control of Veropharm, a
Russian pharmaceutical company, for $315 million.