TripIt Partners with Make-A-Wish® Greater Bay Area to Help Wishes Take Flight

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- TripIt from Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR), the world's highest-rated travel-organizing app, today announced its second annual holiday partnership with Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area*. Through the partnership, TripIt will Adopt-A-Wish® to help create the perfect trip for Mackenna (Kenna), a teenager with a wish to travel to Australia to meet her bone marrow donor. In addition, TripIt is asking travelers to join the cause by participating in TripIt's mileage drive that supports Wishes in Flight®, the program from Make-A-Wish that takes airline miles and turns them into life-changing wishes.

"More than 75 percent of all wishes that Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area grants involve travel," said Patricia Wilson, executive director, Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area.  "TripIt is the ideal partner as their vision of enabling the perfect trip complements our own beliefs in making life better for kids with life-threatening medical conditions.  We are excited to partner with them again this year to grant wishes that change the lives of the kids we serve."

How TripIt is Helping Mackenna's Wish Take Flight

Mackenna (Kenna) has had a remarkable journey. At 13, she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. The only way to treat Kenna's condition was to put her on an aggressive treatment, which included taking chemotherapy pills that fought her colitis but could also cause cancer. Three years later, while still dealing with treatment for colitis, Kenna's family received the dreadful news. Kenna had leukemia. At this point, the chemo could only control the illness, but the fact was that Kenna's life depended on finding a bone marrow donor. They did, halfway across the world in Australia.

This November, TripIt will help make Kenna's wish come true. With TripIt's help, Kenna will travel to Australia where she'll meet her donor and be able to thank him for allowing her to graduate from high school, go to her prom, and for saving her life.

"I want to tell him in person how thankful I am," said Kenna.  "He saved my life.  He is my hero.  To give someone else a second chance is the most selfless thing in the world."

How Travelers Can Join the Cause

TripIt is hosting its second annual mileage drive to give travelers an easy way to give back this holiday season. According to a TripIt survey, two-thirds of travelers have had their miles or rewards points expire.  Instead of letting airline miles collect dust or expire, travelers can now donate select frequent flier miles to Make-A-Wish's Wishes in Flight® program.  Once donated, miles will never expire and are used by Make-A-Wish to support wishes across the country. To participate, visit: tripit.com/gift.  

"The response from our mileage drive last year was fantastic.  The TripIt community raised more than 1 million miles and we are hoping to top that this year," said Barry Padgett, executive vice president of TripIt and Concur Traveler Services.  "As we head into the season of giving, we can all do our part in donating a fraction of our mileage to make more dream trips take flight."

Travelers can also pay it forward by giving the gift of stress-free travel to someone in their life.  TripIt Pro ($49/year) is the all-in-one travel organizing app that automagically creates a master itinerary for every trip so you can access all travel plans in one place—any time, on any device. Plus, it sends real-time alerts for delays, cancellations and gate changes, tracks rewards points and miles programs, alerts travelers when a better seat has become available—and much more. TripIt Pro's Point Tracker feature also alerts users when their points are close to expiring so they can easily use or donate rewards points before they expire.

For more information about TripIt's partnership with Make-A-Wish, and to request an interview or high-resolution images, please contact [email protected].

About TripIt from Concur®

TripIt from Concur, the world's highest-rated travel-organizing app, automagically creates a master itinerary for every trip, giving you instant access to all your travel plans in one place—any time, on any device.  To get started, simply forward flight, hotel, rental car, and restaurant confirmation emails to [email protected].  TripIt Pro has all the organizing power of TripIt, plus extra features for stress-free travel, like real-time flight alerts, seat tracking, refund notifications, and more.  Companies can also extend the power of TripIt to the entire office with TripIt for Teams.  For more information on how TripIt organizes and delights more than 10 million travelers worldwide, please visit us at tripit.com, follow us @TripIt, like us on Facebook, and watch us on YouTube.

About Concur

Concur is the leading provider of spend management solutions and services in the world, helping companies of all sizes transform the way they manage spend so they can focus on what matters most. Through Concur's open platform, the entire travel and expense ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and developers can 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 or the Concur blog.  The Concur Perfect Trip Fund invests in leading edge travel technology companies and is awarding $100,000 in innovation funding at the awards at The Perfect Trip DevCon 2014, from Concur & TripIt. Learn more at www.concur.com or the Concur blog.

*TripIt, based in San Francisco, is adopting Kenna's wish via Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area. Miles donated will go to your local Make-A-Wish chapter and are administered by Make-A-Wish America.

Contact:
Lauren Moreno
Public Relations Manager 
[email protected]

SOURCE TripIt

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