Marquee Hotel and Car Rental Companies To Support Concur Open Booking

REDMOND, Wash., July 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Concur® (NASDAQ: CNQR), a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management services, today announced that several hotels and car rental companies – including 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, the corporate travel option that lets business travelers book hotels and rental cars outside Concur Travel while capturing and providing all travel transaction data to Concur Travel & Expense for a complete itinerary.

Through Concur's T&E Cloud, hotels and car companies participating in Concur Open Booking will be able to link a traveler's Concur Travel profile with the respective loyalty accounts, enabling the supplier to automatically confirm and grant access to a corporate discount – even when the booking occurs on the hotel or car rental website. With two-way itinerary exchange between the supplier and Concur's travel and expense management service, the traveler can complete itineraries with bookings directly on the supplier's website and trigger the automatic return of those completed reservations and available e-receipts to Concur to provide complete visibility, facilitate expense reporting, enhance travel manager duty of care and support policy compliance.

"All companies – whether they have managed or unmanaged travel programs – have some aspect of supplier direct bookings as a component of their travel program," said Michael Koetting, EVP of Supplier Management at Concur. "And whether they acknowledge it or not, even the best run programs see a meaningful percentage of their hotel and car bookings happen outside of the corporate booking tool. Concur Open Booking gives companies of all sizes a convenient way to not only manage those bookings, but also get accurate information on expense reports. Just as importantly, Concur Open Booking makes travelers' lives incredibly simple, by enabling them to book hotel and car reservations directly on the sites that provide them with a superior user experience."

The Need For Open Booking

Corporate travel programs – driven by duty-of-care requirements, a desire for more visibility and the need to offer a better user experience for travelers – are evolving their requirements for full transaction capture irrespective of the booking source. According to a recent PhoCusWright study, the hotel portion of managed corporate travel programs typically has the lowest rates of compliance, with over 40% of travelers not always in compliance with their company's booking channel policy. Car rentals are another area in which business travelers often book outside of the corporate booking tool.

In many cases, employees are booking directly with suppliers for good reason: many travelers believe that they can save the company money and/or feel it's more convenient and cost effective to book directly with the supplier. Leveraging the power of the Concur T&E Cloud, organizations embracing an "open" model can take the next step in managed travel and offer travelers greater freedom, flexibility and cost savings while still maintaining control and visibility into travel spend.

Companies can now bring the advantages of a "managed" program to virtually any booking, no matter where it occurs and bring all travel transaction data back into Concur via Concur's T&E Cloud-powered suppliers. The result is an integrated travel and expense process that takes managed travel to the next level – even if the travel isn't booked from within Concur Travel. Regardless of whether a company's program is managed, unmanaged, or a combination, Concur continues to innovate on behalf of the entire eco-system, delivering an integrated travel and expense process for individuals and companies of all sizes.

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