There was a degree of curiosity a few months back when Booking.com unveiled its Booking.com For Business service.
The idea is that travel managers can search and make reservations for Booking.com-hosted properties within a dedicated platform.
The reason for siphoning off the process from the existing Booking.com interface is that travel managers within a company can organise travel on behalf of employees and keep track of reservations.
Other tools include a company-wide system to manage bookings and maintain oversight of spend, plus discounts specifically for corporate travellers and reviews of properties only from other business travellers.
It is, essentially, putting a TMC gloss on what is a leisure product but is undoubtedly used by huge numbers of corporate travellers.
One of the one hand, one of the world's biggest (and most aggressive, arguably) leisure brands moving into business travel should be enough to send a degree of a shiver down the spine of many travel management companies (unsurprisingly, none we contacted would comment).
But perhaps the Booking.com offshoot's focus solely on accommodation is what will keep TMCs from panicking too much (for the moment).
Yet would the story change to any significant degree if other business travel-related products were added to the platform?
Flights, and to a lesser extent, car rental or transfer, are key components to the corporate travel product.
So will Booking.com add a flight component to Booking.com For Business in the future?
An official says the current offering is serving the "millions of business travellers already book with Booking.com on a monthly basis when they travel on business", so the new service "extends this functionality for travel organisers and travellers to meet their unique needs as part of a single, business account".
But it appears for now that the focus will remain only on accommodation.
Despite some speculation to the contrary, the official says:
"This isn’t something we’re considering at the moment as we’re offering a unique and customised service that builds on the existing support we provide to independent business travellers to help meet their particular needs when it comes to finding the right accommodation."