Travelocity Business, which until now has solely promoted the GetThere online booking tool to clients, has quietly become a Concur reseller.
Travelocity Business and GetThere are sister companies in the Sabre fold, but the Travelocity Business decision to branch out with Concur is hardly an earth-shaking move.
After all, says Travelocity Business president Yannis Karmis, GetThere supports multiple global distribution systems and not just the Sabre GDS, and the Sabre GDS supports booking tools from GetThere, Concur, Rearden, TRX and nuTravel.
Karmis says Travelocity Business currently is having discussions with potential clients who prefer to use Concur Travel, the booking tool, or Concur Expense.
"This is another dimension, another way to go out into the marketplace," Karmis says.
Meanwhile, Joel Bailey, vice president of global operations at Travelocity Business, says Travelocity Business developed IntelliTask, a midoffice solution which sits on top of a GDS layer for queues and is designed to flag online bookings and assign agents when additional service is required.
IntelliTask uses a rules-based workflow management engine to asses factors such as who made the booking, whether it was made by a VIP traveler; the travel date; last date to ticket; the account; and the company's division.
It then assigns the booking to offline travel agents with the most appropriate expertise, and tracks the entire process, Bailey says.
Previously, Travelocity Business relied on the queue model, "first in and first out," Bailey says, adding that IntelliTask has spurred a 20% gain in productivity.