New Rakuten Travel and Concur Partnership Improves Hotel Booking Options for Japanese Business Travelers

TOKYO and BELLEVUE, Wash., Sept. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Rakuten Travel, Inc., a subsidiary of Rakuten Inc. (4755: Tokyo), one of the world's largest internet services companies and Concur Technologies, Inc, (Nasdaq: CNQR), a leading global provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, today announced a new partnership that will provide Concur Travel users worldwide access to make reservations from suppliers offered by Rakuten Travel's hotel reservation service. The combination of Rakuten Travel's inventory (one of Japan's largest Internet hotel reservation sites) with Concur Travel (the cloud-based travel booking tool) provides a solution that enhances convenience for business travelers and gives their companies the ability to better visualize corporate costs.

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Concur Travel is now available to the Japanese market as of today, while the integration with Rakuten Travel is expected to be available later this year. Concur will make this additional travel booking content available to both its Japanese based clients as well as its worldwide client base.

By integrating with Concur's advanced solutions, Rakuten Travel expects to increase the number of reservations made by corporate clients as well as capture the demand for hotel stays in Japan from more than 18 thousand companies and 20 million overseas users worldwide.

Overview of Concur Travel for Japanese Market
The Japanese configuration of Concur Travel provides corporations within Japan or with employees travelling within Japan, the ability to book airline tickets and hotel reservations that comply with their companies' policies on-line.  Reservations and other itinerary information is also automatically integrated with Concur clients using the Japanese configuration of Concur Expense. Concur Expense supports IC Card integration with Suica and Pasmo cards (introduced in February 2012). The integration of Concur Travel & Expense provides companies with visibility into their T&E spending to enable smart spending  decisions and effective budget management.

Other features and functions of Concur Travel include:

• The ability to streamline corporate travel booking while automatically enforcing travel policies and providing visibility to non-compliance.
• Search and book relevant in-policy travel from multiple Global Distribution Systems (GDS), with support of negotiated corporate discounts for both domestic and international travel.
• Access to Japanese domestic hotel reservation services with integration of Rakuten Travel providing employees with the broadest choice of hotel content based on their companies travel policy, all within one on-line booking tool.
• Access Concur Travel & Expense through smartphone and tablet devices. This enables business travellers and managers to book travel, capture expenses, submit expenses and approve claims while on the go.

About Concur
Concur® is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions for companies of all sizes. Concur's easy-to-use web-based and mobile solutions help companies and their employees control costs and save time. In support of the mission to fuel The Perfect Trip™, Concur delivers continuous innovation through The Concur® T&E Cloud, the open platform that enables the entire ecosystem to build upon and extend applications, content and T&E data aggregated through Concur; and Concur® Big Data, which leverages the industry's most comprehensive source of T&E data to provide enhanced value in accordance with their travel policies. The Concur Perfect Trip Fund invests in leading edge innovative travel technology companies and is awarding $100,000 in innovation awards at its first annual Developer Conference on October 2, 2013.  Apply here or learn more at http://www.concur.com  or the Concur blog.

About Rakuten Travel
Rakuten Travel is one of the Japan's largest Online Travel Agency and a member of the Rakuten Group.  Launched in 2001 and established as a subsidiary in 2002, Rakuten Travel shares a customer base with Rakuten Ichiba, the largest online shopping mall in Japan. In the spirit of Rakuten's empowerment model, Rakuten Travel provides the platform to support accommodation providers in today's global market.  In the past ten years, Rakuten Travel has established offices in 12 countries and 20 cities. http://travel.rakuten.co.jp/kaigai

SOURCE Concur