Expedia partners with Chase to give basic travel management to small businesses, Travelocity is the first TMC to bring live customer chat to smartphones, and more items in our roundup of the stories that are making news and driving opinion on 13 September.
Expedia targets small business travel planners
Yesterday Expedia's new partnership with US banking conglomerate Chase. Expedia will provide travel management tools and rewards for small business customers of the Ink from Chase credit cards and flexible payment solutions.
Small business owners get a dashboard view of the travel plans and associated expenses of their employees, reports the AP.
As an incentive to participate, cardholders earn $100 coupon for travel for every 10 hotel nights stayed, in addition to any rewards earned in other reward programs from Expedia and other travel companies.
CEO of Expedia, Dara Khosrowshahi, told the AP:
"We saw some power-users out there — booking 50 or 100 trips a year. Turns out they were travel arrangers for small businesses."
“We saw some power-users out there — booking 50 or 100 trips a year. Turns out they were travel arrangers for small businesses,” he said.
Orbitz launched its own small business product in March: Orbitz for Business Express.
Travelocity is the first OTA to bring live customer chat to mobile devices
Travelocity Businesses’ TBiz Chat enables business travelers to reach a corporate agent via a chat on their smartphone through parent company Sabre's TripCase app. Says the company in an e-mail interview:
Travelocity Businesses embedded a banner on TBiz Smart Access, the customer's travel portal that brings up a live chat window. In addition, if the traveler has bookmarked TBiz Chat on their mobile phones, they can access it that way.
Qatar Airways ties up with Wipro
The Doha based, state-owned carrier today announced a partnership with leading Indian IT company Wipro.
Qatar Airways is one of three fast-expanding Gulf airlines, while Wipro has key experience in application development and project management for IT software with its employees in south India
Northwind integrates products with SilverWare
Independent and multi-property hospitality operators can now run property management system (PMS) and point of sale (POS) systems on one database, thanks to an integrated products from Northwind and Silverware.
Owners can use a dashboard on one platform to monitor guest service and revenue from all property profit centers and some guest loyalty programs.