How the New Traxo Filter Captures Off-Channel Bookings

In the industry's quest to capture off-channel bookings, itinerary management software company Traxo has combined its existing data aggregation and email parsing skills with a new way to access corporate clients' emails. It's called Traxo Filter and went on the market on Wednesday.

There's no email forwarding by travelers or the need to enter loyalty credentials; you'll never capture all the bookings that way, CEO Andres Fabris said. There are no direct connections with suppliers; the task of setting up partnerships with every supplier would be never ending. Nor does Traxo's process require it to access corporates' email systems (see sidebar below). So how does Traxo do it?

Traxo sends clients a kind of starter kit: a license, some rules—"not even code"—and a two-page how-to that directs an IT administrator where in the mail server to drop those email server rules. Once that's done—it can take 20 minutes, Fabris claimed—the mail server monitors for messages arriving from Traxo's database of supplier email addresses that send confirmation emails. He said that list covers 90 percent of suppliers, and subscribers will receive software updates with more senders as Traxo builds its list.

As confirmation emails come in, the email server automatically blind copies those messages to a unique Traxo email address set up for each client. From there, the same tech Traxo has used for eight years to organize travel itineraries then digests HTML, text and PDF content, including changes, cancellations and refunds. "It's luckily something else that we didn't have to go off and build just given our DNA growing up as an itinerary management tool," Fabris said.

Then Traxo Filter adds the data to the Traxo Connect dashboard, part of the software provider's existing platform. Traxo Connect still can take information from bookings that employees forward or from supplier direct connections. Traxo Filter can either supplement or replace those data feeds. Via the dashboard, travel managers can see real-time spend, as well as traveler whereabouts. Fabris noted that non-technical people can handle the data, which can be viewed in list or map form and filtered by traveler, date and location. The system also monitors flight statuses. Travel managers can report on the information they find in the dashboard, download it and share it with service providers like re-shopping tools, risk management systems, expense reporting systems and business intelligence tools.

"The other folks that we've seen trying to solve this problem [without requiring action by the traveler, such as forwarding booking confirmations] are doing analytics and reporting and leakage analysis based on data that comes out of expense reports or the general ledger," Fabris said. "And in both of those cases, it's 60 days old. It's after the fact; it's already been purchased, traveled, spent. It's just kind of interesting information, rather than actionable insights."

Traxo Filter works with Microsoft Exchange, Outlook 365 and Gmail-based systems, which cover the critical mass of corporate email accounts. If a client uses a different email system, Traxo will add it, he said.

Traxo is selling Traxo Filter to corporates for $1,000 plus $1 per transaction or for $5,000 a month plus $0.50 per transaction. Fabris said, though, that Traxo will focus on reselling relationships with travel management companies.

What Else Is Coming to Traxo Filter

What travel managers do with the data in real time is up to them. Travel managers could re-shop bookings, try to convert them to corporate negotiated rates or even reward travelers for bookings that save money, Fabris suggested. "We take an agnostic view. We just say, 'The corporate travel manager ought to know,' and we leave it at that."

Traxo does plan, however, to add tools to make it easier for travel managers to move data to suppliers. The company has 20 partnerships in place with duty of care providers like Anvil and iJet, expense providers like Chrome River and Coupa and business intelligence tools like DVI. "We're going to continue to build that out," he said, alluding to a marketplace of suppliers that could access Traxo's data at the behest of common clients, encompassing such additional categories as value-added-tax reclamation providers.

Traxo Filter's road map also includes benchmarking that will help travel managers see at a glance whether an off-channel booking performed well against the corporation's negotiated rates. Those shaded in red, for example, might be X percent over the benchmark for that destination on that date. Travel managers could use that information, for example, to discuss the anomaly with the traveler, to try to apply a corporate negotiated rate or to re-shop the booking. Thus, re-shopping tools also are among the third-party partnership integrations Traxo is establishing.

"We'll specialize in all of the data and then leave all these additional little services to the folks that provide those services today," Fabris said. "We'll provide some light-visualization tools, but if they want to take it to the nth degree and render this within a Domo or a Tableau, we'll have these little connectors that push the data out to those various companies."

Traxo Expansion Plans

Fabris told BTN Traxo's technology works across 38 languages, though sales and marketing have centered on North America. The company will make a Europe push in 2018 and an Asia/Pacific push in 2019, and it has started to put people on the ground in those markets.