About Christopherson Business Travel
Beyond a booking tool: a brief overview of our university’s travel management company.
Scenario: a few months ago, you purchased a ticket through an online travel booking vendor because it cost less to the university. Before booking, you checked pricing with university’s preferred vendor, Christopherson Business Travel, but felt it was in the university’s best interest to use this other company. Unfortunately, the conference you planned to attend was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. After hunting for a customer service phone number hidden on the outside vendor’s website, their service representative advises to contact the airline direct. The airline’s call system puts you on hold for a half hour, before you finally speak with an agent who instructs you may only change your flight. And place an unused ticket credit to your account. Refunds are not permitted since you chose a basic economy flight.
The credit remains unused and later expires.
Whether you used the departmental purchasing card or your own personal card, funds are equally lost.
With the university’s new travel management service provider, Christopherson Business Travel, this scenario will no longer happen.
Christopherson Business Travel (CBT) is the selected vendor as the travel service provider for Kent State University through the Inter-University Council Purchasing Group of Ohio (IUC-PG).
Christopherson Business Travel is the independently owned leader in intelligent corporate travel management with over 30 years' experience. They are a certified, woman-owned corporation, and ranked by Business Travel News as the 12th largest corporate travel agency in the United States.
Using CBT’s robust and innovative travel management technology, Christopherson ensures discounted airfare guarantees, best available hotel rates, spend tracking, unused ticket reporting and notifications, price matching, and offers experienced travel advisors available 365/24/7 with dedicated online and phone support.
Christopherson Business Travel offers each university faculty and staff their own customizable dashboard through their software platform, AirPortal. Within this dashboard, users should update their personal profile with preferences, membership numbers, emergency contact information, and other important management information.
When logging into AirPortal, users immediately see AirBank, the platform’s unused ticket database. It centralizes and notifies all outstanding tickets and integrates them with the online booking tool feature.
More importantly, CBT offers the university travelers a peace-of-mind through the platform’s duty-of-care risk management portal, SecurityLogic. The feature provides real-time data on weather, airport delays, security issues, and disaster alerts.
Employees are auto-enrolled into the Christopherson Business Travel system through a weekly file transfer; however, users must update profile before booking. Here’s how to do it:
- Log in via: Airportal through FlashLine
- A notice for new users will appear at the top of the dashboard advising profile update.
- Review and update information has needed. Disabled fields (gray) cannot be changed. If there are errors in these fields, ESPECIALLY THE NAME FIELDS, please contact KSU's HR department or the Christopherson Online Tech Support:
Contact
Hours: 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM ET, Monday - Friday
Online Tech Support: 888-535-0179
Email: onlinesupport@cbtravel.com
To reach a CBT booking agent, at any time:
Christopherson Agent Team
Advisor Group - University Team: 800-285-3603
Email: university.travel@cbtravel.com