Corporate online booking and expense management market leader SAP Concur will take North America-hosted systems offline this Saturday to upgrade its network infrastructure, the company informed clients. Concur estimated that the work, beginning April 7 at 12 p.m. PDT, would last 10 hours. It said customers using Concur’s EMEA or China data centers would not be affected. The upgrade… Read More »
Some travel management company sources are concerned about competition from SAP Concur’s Hipmunk-powered small-business offering. A new TripLink-related requirement for Concur’s preferred partners is irksome to others. It’s just another day in the alliance, ever uneasy for some, between Concur and TMCs. Whether they’re resellers or preferred partners, certain TMCs have worried about the tech company’s moves in… Read More »
It’s clear that travel risk management is a top priority for travel management professionals (1, 2). Recent industry research, though, showed companies are at varying stages of preparedness. The demand is there. Company leaders, investors and regulators may insist on certain measures. Travelers are asking, too. One-quarter of the travel managers polled in April 2017 by the Association of… Read More »
For any given business travel program, the only policy compliance numbers that really matter are its own. Even so, industry research in this area can help shape dialogue on the topic and sometimes influence the perspectives of a travel manager’s key constituents. A handful of surveys that this year addressed corporate travel booking policy compliance showed that while it… Read More »
TripBam is growing fast. What started as a rate checking and re-shopping service now also can serve as a tool for hotel rate negotiations. Its analytics dashboard evolved into a hotel program management system. Now, to better cover client needs, TripBam is working to bring in data on bookings made directly with hotels and put those reservations through… Read More »
Business travel startup Pana is eyeing profitability next quarter after narrowing its focus to a seemingly underappreciated and underserved population in corporate travel: non-employees. Contractors, suppliers, board members, prospects, family members and job candidates have many similar needs, but it’s employed business travelers for whom companies design policies and procedures. Firms employ workarounds to address other constituents, but… Read More »
Concur expects to launch by February the ability to pull Airbnb listings into hotel-only search results within the Concur Travel self-booking tool. At companies that opt in, users searching for lodging as a standalone item would see Airbnb listings with pricing and some details. That includes requests using Concur’s “vicinity search.” Booking requires the user to click over… Read More »