Upside Business Travel, which provided booking services to unmanaged and lightly managed corporate travel programs, will officially close in September. In a post on its website, the company, which was founded in 2016, said the closing was due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the travel industry. The post said lingering uncertainty about when and if business travel will return to pre-pandemic levels has made raising additional capital or finding an alternative path too unlikely at this point. As a company, said the post, “we fought hard to the end, and we decided to act now while we still have sufficient capital to conduct an orderly wind down of the business, take care of our employees and other obligations, and transition clients.” The company also said in its post that:
Bookings can no longer be made on its site.
Existing bookings will be serviced through its Navigators service at navigators@upside.com.
Bookings that do not complete travel by Sept. 24, 2021 will be canceled and refunded.
- As of Sept. 24, clients will no longer have access to itineraries or receipts; or be able to convert gift card balances to gift cards.
- Upside had created an Omega Go+ private label booking platform for Omega World, and that channel will no longer allow new bookings, with existing bookings ending on or before Sept. 24 to be serviced by Omega agents.