American Express marks centennial with retrospective

In April 1917, the Goodyear tire company dispatched three Packard trucks from its home in Akron, Ohio, with a simple charge: Establish a new route to the Goodyear tire mill in Boston.

Over the course of four difficult weeks, each of the truck’s two-man crews made their way through muddy ditches, across rickety bridges and along rudimentary dirt roads before finally arriving in Bean Town. The return trip, however, was undertaken in better weather and lasted just five days. By the time the Goodyear crews rolled back into Akron, they had proven the viability of trucking as a distribution method. The long-distance trucking industry was here to stay.

That story is just one of a 100 tales that American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), No. 3 on the Travel Weekly 2015 Power List, plans to feature on its website between now and early 2016 as part of a promotion the company is calling “100 Years of Business Travel.” The promotion is timed to coincide with the centennial this month of American Express’ entry into the travel business.

“Each of these moments tells a story about how business was enabled by travel, whether it was inventions or ideas or discoveries that have changed business as we know it,” said GBT Senior Vice President Kevin Carey.

GBT was spun off from American Express Travel in 2014. The project, he said, demonstrates how proud the company is of its brand heritage.

The first four stories featured in “100 Years of Business Travel,” posted on July 20, date sequentially from 1915 through 1918.

The stories include the tale of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, which was held in honor of the previous year’s opening of the Panama Canal; a 1916 meeting of American captains of industry, who converged on Washington to discuss preparing the economy for entry into World War I; and the experience of Swedish vacuum-cleaner magnate Axel Leonard Wenner-Gren, who got the inspiration that would lead to his 1918 founding of Electrolux during a business trip to Vienna a decade earlier.

Qantas founders George Gorham, Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh at the start of their journey via automobile across the Australian Outback in 1920.

To mine the 100 stories, GBT brought on the historical research firm History Associates. And while some of the events they selected feature GBT clients such as IBM, being a GBT client was not a prerequisite, Carey said.

James Lide, History Associates vice president, said his team cast a “very wide net” as it developed the GBT list of history-changing moments in business travel. Newspapers, business journals, university archives and public corporate filings were just some of the sources they used.

The researchers were looking for two types of moments, he said. The first were ones in which a significant event or business’ development came about because of travel. The second were moments that heralded significant changes in business travel itself.

GBT has also released teasers of its selections running through 1955. The events it will highlight in the weeks to come comprise a who’s who of corporate giants, among them McDonald’s, General Motors, Boeing, Dow Chemical, IKEA, Disney and Qantas.

Lide said one of his favorite entries is the one from 1941, describing how scientists from Merck, Squibb and Pfizer traveled across the Atlantic to develop a way to produce penicillin on a scale large enough to provide the antibiotic to Allied forces. Another favorite comes from 1954, when Lego’s Godtfred Christiansen was inspired by a discussion with a stranger on a ferry ride to change the direction of the company.

“It is remarkable to think that such a brief conversation during a chance encounter would provide a spark that helped create such a giant in the toy industry,” Lide wrote in an email.

Carey said that as the “100 Years in Business Travel” series moves toward modern times, the list will reflect travel themes such as the integration of mobile technologies into the experience.