Concur Unveils New Innovations to Its Corporate Travel Booking Tool

REDMOND, Wash., July 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Concur®, a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions (NASDAQ: CNQR), will preview Concur Open Booking, as well as a number of new features for its popular corporate booking solution at GBTA 2012 Convention in Boston. As business travelers book outside a corporate travel tool due to convenience or cheaper travel options, companies face a growing issue of capturing spend that happens outside of  the corporate travel program.  The new innovations from Concur give business travelers more choice and flexibility while helping their organizations to better ensure that policies are being followed, deliver enhanced duty of care and provide better visibility into travel spend. GBTA Convention attendees can check out these latest Concur innovations at booth # 1724.

Concur Open Booking Balances Compliance and Choice
Concur Open Booking is the corporate travel option that extends the innovations previously available through Concur's connection with TripIt, and addresses the existing problem of hotel and rental car program leakage.  With Open Booking, business travelers can book hotels and rental cars outside Concur and the TMC, obtain their corporate negotiated rates and still bring all travel transaction data back into Concur for a complete itinerary and total visibility by the traveler, travel manager, and TMC. With Concur Open Booking and Concur Locate & Alert, companies can ensure that wherever travelers book travel, their locations are tracked and assistance can be provided if needed. New innovations to support Concur Open Booking include:

• Direct Supplier Integration – Business travelers will be able to link their Concur profile with their loyalty accounts from participating hotels and car rental companies, automatically access their corporate discount and book directly on participating supplier websites and still have all their travel details easily accessible from Concur's mobile app or online with two-way itinerary exchange between the suppliers and Concur. E-receipts will automatically pre-populate the expense report eliminating work for the traveler. Travelers with linked Concur and TripIt profiles will also have all itinerary details plus maps, directions and more in TripIt. Avis Car Rental, Best Western International, Choice Hotels International, Inc., Hertz, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), La Quinta Inns & Suites, Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. plan to participate in Concur Open Booking.
• Itinerary Integration – Concur has included the email parsing technology from TripIt inside the Concur application, so that travelers and arrangers can build a single consolidated itinerary combining traditional GDS and Direct Connect bookings with travel booked outside of Concur. Travelers can now forward travel confirmation emails from travel suppliers to [email protected]. Concur will create an expense report based on the consolidated itinerary with click of a button.
• Other New Tools to View Travelers' Trips – Concur will release Concur Open Agent for the web to empower clients and TMCs to view the full content of an itinerary and traveler profiles from within Concur Travel or Concur Travel & Expense. In addition, TMCs and Concur partners can access an itinerary web service through Concur's T&E Cloud to programmatically access and update full itinerary content.

New Innovations Improve Traveler Experiences
Concur continues to enhance its corporate travel booking tool to improve the travel booking experience and to offer more global content. New features and capabilities to Concur Travel include:

• New Hotel Recommendations – Leveraging big data from travel transactions of over 18 million travelers, Concur now provides personalized hotel recommendations for travelers based on the traveler's past trips and preferences in accordance with their company's travel policy.
• Concur Connect Platform Access to Hotel Content – Through the Concur Connect platform, Concur now provides suppliers with an API based on the Open Travel Alliance hotel specification to allow them to make their content available to Concur clients.  Cleartrip, India's leading online travel portal, has announced its intent to support the Concur Connect Platform and make its market-leading Indian hotel content available to Concur clients directly through Concur Travel.
• Better Rail Experience for Deutsche Bahn Users – Travelers in Germany can now compare air and rail pricing side-by-side, while still completing their purchase on the Bahn.de web site.  Travelers can view prices within Concur and travel managers can set policies about when air and rail are each appropriate, while still retaining the convenience of booking directly on the familiar Deutsche Bahn website.

About Concur
Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions. Concur's easy-to-use Web-based and mobile solutions help companies and their employees control costs and save time. Concur Connect is the platform that enables the entire travel and expense ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and solution partners to access and extend Concur's T&E cloud. Concur's systems adapt to individual employee preferences and scale to meet the needs of companies from small to large. Learn more at www.concur.com.

SOURCE Concur