OPEN BOOKING & NEGOTIATED RATES

How does open booking affect suppliers and negotiated rate programs? That’s a touchy area, said Carmine Carpanzano, CEO of nuTravel.

For one thing, Open booking is too often another term for bypass of negotiated rate programs.

Even when corporate travelers book with a hotel or airline that has negotiated rates, the company may not get credit for the volume, because there is no way to match the traveler with its employer’s negotiated contract.

Breaks the connection
“Suppliers have a problem with open booking,” Carpanzano said. “If you are not driving volume to meet certain goals, you don’t deserve their discount. Open booking breaks that connection.”

It’s a problem for client companies too. As Carpanzano pointed out, “at the end of the day, it is supplier discounts that are meaningful to the company.”

Yes, there is software that can link an out-of-channel booking to a specific traveler and supplier to track the volume. But too often the software requires manual data entry or some other intervention by the travel manager. Plus, not all companies allow those third-party programs on corporate communications or IT networks.
Tags: concuropenbooking.blogspot.com, concur, open booking, tmc, travel, travel management company, travelopenbooking.blogspot.com

Concur adds to Open Booking option

2012-07-24
Concur has added a number of new hotel and car rental participants to its Open Booking option. Specializing in integrated travel and expense management services, Concur has added Avis Car Rental, Best Western International, Choice Hotels International, Inc., Hertz, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), La Quinta Inns & Suites, Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc to its Open Booking option, which allows business travellers to book hotels and rental cars outside Concur Travel while capturing and providing all travel transaction data to Concur Travel & Expense for a complete itinerary.

Through Concur's T&E Cloud, hotels and car companies participating in Concur Open Booking will be able to link a traveller's Concur Travel profile with the respective loyalty accounts, enabling the supplier to automatically confirm and grant access to a corporate discount -- even when the booking occurs on the hotel or car rental web site.

With two-way itinerary exchange between the supplier and Concur's travel and expense management service, the traveller can complete itineraries with bookings directly on the supplier's web site and trigger the automatic return of those completed reservations and available e-receipts to Concur to provide complete visibility, facilitate expense reporting, enhance travel manager duty of care and support policy compliance.

Tags: Concur, Open Booking, tmc, Travel, travel management company, travelopenbooking.blogspot.com, concuropenbooking.blogspot.com