American Express Business Travel has teamed with WorldMate to broaden the travel management company's mobile offerings.
Amex has agreed to integrate WorldMate's premium services into the TMC's overall mobile platform for corporate clients and their business travelers, WorldMate says.
The WorldMate integration supplements other itinerary management services which Amex offers through Rearden Commerce.
The WorldMate itinerary services will be available to Amex-connected road warriors on Blackberrys and other mobile devices, WorldMate says.
The fee-based premium services, which WorldMate brands as its Gold membership product, include automatic itinerary synchronization; flight alerts with suggested alternatives, when necessary; the ability to share itineraries with fellow employees, itinerary integration with a mapping and navigation application; and social-networking tools.
The Amex version of the WorldMate premium service also includes one-click access to Amex travel counselors.
There is some overlap between the WorldMate product and other itinerary-management services which Amex offers to its clients through Rearden Commerce.
The Rearden Mobile Personal Assistant, which Amex is offering to its clients regardless of which corporate booking tools they support, syncs itineraries with passenger name records (PNRs), faciliates mobile check-in, and provides travel alerts, dining search and reservations, flight search and weather information.
Corporations apparently are pressuring their TMCs to get onboard with mobile solutions that will enable business travelers to better-manage their trips while adhering to corporate travel policies.
As Amex gets its mobile-platform act together, it apparently is giving corporations an array of choices -- including Rearden and WorldMate -- for various itinerary services
Thus, slowly, global TMCs are picking mobile-solutions partners.
WorldMate rival, TripIt, revealed a BCD Travel partnership for itinerary services in August 2009.