The Hollywood formula is to go from teaser to preview to launch. Texas-based Sabre Holdings is borrowing that playbook with the launch of TripCase Corporate, a B2B service the company is layering onto its existing B2C itinerary management mobile app TripCase for Apple and Android phones.
Sabre built TripCase as consumer tool to deliver itineraries and messages in real-time, but is now bolting on travel manager integration. It is betting that travelers would prefer to use a single app to manage all of their travel plans rather than separate ones for personal and business.
Instead of information merely flowing into the app for consumer's use, the app now lets the user voluntarily send information back out to travel managers, to analyze travel booked outside corporate programs.
The combined consumer/corporate vision, first articulated in November 2011, has taken a long time to execute.
Sabre's 50-plus-employee Traveler Solutions department, which oversees TripCase, will need to accelerate its pace to compete effectively with the more successful rival TripIt, owned by Concur -- not forgetting WorldMate and Egencia's TripNavigator
Corporate bolt-on
TripCase users whose companies have adopted the solution will be able to make reservations outside their corporation's travel program from any OTA, GDS, or direct supplier. That distinguishes the app from products made by some rivals, which only offer full functioning itinerary management for travel booked within a specific booking tool.
When a traveler marks an item of their trip (such as a hotel stay) as "business" instead of "leisure", the app will prompt him or her to say a message along the lines of, "Would you like to notify your company about this business expense?" If they do, the information would then be captured and shared with the corporation.
As of the product launch today, TripCase Corporate clients can send notifications through a set of APIs to encourage employees to make travel bookings within company policy, take advantage of perks (such as free breakfasts, car insurance, or hotel wi-fi already included in a package rate), and obey safety warnings when visiting dangerous locations. They can also send multi-GDS and non-GDS trip details about meetings, ground transportation, and OpenTable restaurant reservations.
If a user creates an itinerary in the app, he or she may see a prompt that says something like, "Hey, we noticed you don't have a hotel for this trip yet, so click here to book within your company's policy." Any bookings would be provided through integration with GetThere, Sabre's expense management solution, where possible.
A tactic to boost downloads
Where does the Hollywood formula come in? Sabre is only teasing and previewing the functionality, starting today at the Global Business Travel Association convention in San Diego. Not all of the functionality being teased is available yet.
Within 60 days, Sabre will introduce the option for coporations to send out personalized invitations to all of their employees to encourage them to download TripCase and use it to store their travel. That should boost downloads and usage of the app, as well as make the tool more useful for travel managers. Companies already using TripCase include Cisco, Motorola, Oracle and Sapient.
Sabre claims TripCase has been downloaded 5 million times and it predicts that in 2013 it's on pace to manage a little more than 10 million trips. The corporate-branded email solicitation to get new employees to sign up to TripCase could mean an ongoing stream of new customers.
Travel manager dashboard
Later this autumn, travel managers at companies that have signed up for TripCase Corporate will be invited to use a Web-based dashboard that will present spend data from employees using TripCase to upload their business expenditures.
Will Pinnell, director of mobile strategy for Sabre Holdings, touted this new functionality to Tnooz in a phone interview:
Where we'll shine and differentiate ourselves from other products on the market is by offering this dashboard for corporate travel managers to log in to see in real-time what's happening in and out of the program.
They'll be able to see the total number of bookings made outside of the programs, based on date ranges. They'll gain insight into where their employees are spending money: is it with an OTA, a chain, where are they booking?
While sophisticated travel programs with expense integration may already have that ability to mine the data, most travel manager departments either aren't that sophisticated or don't know how to interpret the results. We'll offer a visually appealing way to understand how efficiently their travel management program is operating.
Company-branded tickets and invoices will be available in the email, the app, and the site.
Potential flaw: No expenses reporting
A travel management app would ideally do double-duty in helping a business traveler compile and submit a travel expenses form, a standard requirement at many corporations. But that feature isn't offered by TripCase. Apps like Expensify will still have to be used separately.
This is another initiative by Sabre to diversify its services from being primarily a global reservations system used by airlines. Given the advanced lead that TripIt and WorldMate have in this space, the company will need to pull off a true Hollywood-style come-from-behind ending if it wants a blockbuster on its hands. The company has just posted a position for a marketing manager to help.