With expanded TripLink and App Center Ecosystems, Concur delivers unprecedented value to businesses and seamless experiences to travelers around the globe.
BELLEVUE, WASH. – Concur, an SAP company and the world's leading provider of travel, expense and invoice management solutions, announced expansions to Concur TripLink and Concur App Center. TripLink is experiencing rapid growth, fueled by United Airlines and Marriott International. In addition, Concur App Center recently expanded with localized offerings in the UK and Australia, now connecting businesses and travelers to more than 160 travel and enterprise applications. By integrating with more providers and applications, Concur's rich ecosystem delivers unprecedented value to businesses and seamless experiences to travelers around the globe.
"As traveler and business needs have become more dynamic, solving for one market or one use case isn't enough. That drove Concur to build a robust, global platform and connected ecosystem," said John Gibbon, Vice President Platform at Concur. "This helps our customers gain more visibility into spend while also allowing their employees to travel and work more efficiently."
TripLink, the corporate travel industry's first platform to extend the value of the managed travel program to bookings made on supplier sites, is growing with new partner integrations that deliver greater value to travel and business managers. These include Marriott International and United Airlines which recently went live on TripLink. AccorHotels integration with TripLink will also soon be available.
According to a recent GBTA study commissioned by Concur, companies identify direct booking as a growing problem and yet many have not implemented tools to pull this spend into managed programs. TripLink is Concur's solution to that problem. With TripLink, companies can capture data from flights, hotels and ground transportation providers that are already being booked direct without encouraging more direct bookings. TripLink also extends managed travel programs and policies to bookings happening directly with suppliers. As a result, companies can extend their negotiated rates to TripLink supplier sites and fulfill duty of care responsibilities.
"We recently added TripLink to enhance our managed travel program," said Donna Rufo, Director, Global Travel for EPAM Systems. "TripLink is essential for us to provide duty of care and streamline the travel and expense process."
Adoption among Concur customers is rapidly growing, offering visibility into bookings where previously there was none.
- More than 4 million users have access to TripLink today.
- To date, TripLink has captured more than 1.4 million itineraries that otherwise would not have been visible to travel and business managers. TripLink Direct bookings year-to-date have increased more than 900 percent compared to the same time period last year.
- More than 700,000 supplier connections have been established. As partners like United Airlines and Marriott International have gone live, connection numbers soared.
Concur is in the process of onboarding more TripLink partners expected to launch in 2017. To date, TripLink has partnerships with 24 of the world's leading travel suppliers.
Further bolstering Concur's ecosystem and extending greater benefits to customers, the Concur App Center recently expanded with localized offerings in the UK and Australia. The Concur App Center features third-party applications and services that easily integrate with Concur, delivering seamless traveler experiences and unprecedented visibility into business categories such as risk and compliance, tax management and spend optimization. Rapid growth and adoption are expected across EMEA and APAC markets, mirroring the success of Concur App Center in the U.S. and Japan, which launched in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
"The Concur App Center has been a great resource for introducing us to apps that integrate with Concur to make life easier for my travelers and my finance team," said Cara Sviokla, CFO of Eurasia Group. "By connecting Concur with Rocketrip, we are able to give our travelers a better experience and save money on our side – it's a win/win for everyone."
More than 25 new partners have been added to the Concur App Center in the last year, including Armanino, Cater Nation, Dav El | BostonCoach, Didi Chuxing, ExcluServ, Ola Cabs, Red Lion Hotels Corporation, Scope5, SpotHero, Snapcar and WWStay. The use of enterprise applications integrating with Concur also grew by more than 100 percent last year and includes solutions from partners such as Taxback International, Brittenford, Medpro Systems, Motus, Monaeo and PivotPayables. The Concur App Center now supports integration with more than 160 travel and enterprise applications, making it the industry standard for a comprehensive travel and expense ecosystem.
Rocketrip is one of the most notable recent examples of innovation within the Concur App Center. Rocketrip's platform reduces corporate travel costs and improves policy compliance using an incentives-based solution to influence employee spending. Rocketrip's deeper integration with Concur will deliver a better travel experience for employees and lower costs for their companies.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
