It all used to be so simple: Your travel program sat with your travel management company, and they offered you their preferred online booking tool to handle your online bookings.
When online bookings were a small part of an overall program, this was OK(ish) but business travel booking technology now represents a much larger chunk of your travel and, with the rapid integration of AI tools, should we even call them online booking tools anymore? Whatever name we land on, they are arguably the de facto plank of a modern corporate travel program. And they should be sourced as such.
Here are some of the most important questions travel buyers need to ask at RFP stage, in shortlisting or at the final sourcing.
Why am I changing my booking platform?
The first question buyers should ask of themselves is why they are going out to bid for a new OBT. There could be many reasons – the existing provider does not offer the right content, it is overpriced, it does not integrate well with other systems, such as expense and ERPs. It could be that the booking platform does not work well with the incumbent TMC.
Merger and acquisition can be an important factor. If your program suddenly grows from something national to multinational, you may need to change your tech strategy.
2. What type of booking tech do you want?
“Booking tools generally fall into three categories,” says Guy Snelgar of Sage Consulting.
- Developed by travel technology specialists, used by a range of TMCs and direct corporate customers, such as Atriis, Cytric, SAP Concur and Spotnana.
- Proprietary tech, developed by and exclusive to one TMC, such as Navan and Perk and arguably Egencia.
- Business travel online travel agents, effectively retail online travel agencies adapted for business travel, often with minimal tools for tailored travel management such as Booking.com for Business and Trip.com.
Ask whether you want to contract with the booking tech provider directly, whether you are happy to use your TMC’s proprietary tool or have a travel program that could manage with a simpler tool that comes with lower setup and usage costs.
3. Does it match my program?
Ask yourself what your program looks like. If you are only looking for a tool that can help you book domestic, point-to-point trips for a small number of travelers, your choice will be different from someone looking for a booking platform that supports a program covering 40 countries and with complex, multi-leg international air trips.
Assessing your program means taking an inventory of your servicing and technology components, strategic priorities, preferred suppliers, inefficiencies and automations, and stakeholder feedback, says Amy Williams of Festive Road.
“It is critical that the starting point is defined and that the buyer can precisely state what they are trying to solve,” she says.
4. Best-of-breed or all-in-one?
Some OBTs are more equal than others when it comes to content access, integration aptitude with other tech platforms or user experience. There are some all-rounders that provide a balance of all these. “We often do not decide whether the client wants a best-of-breed or all-in-one at the start of the engagement,” said Acquis Consulting’s Chloe Carver. “For most recent RFPs, we include a mix of both so that they can really see what is out there and start to imagine how their program could be set up. Even if they think they only want to change their OBT, we often include at least one or two hybrids so that they can see all options.”
5. What content do you offer…really?
Content is a key differentiator for booking platforms. If your program relies heavily on rail or low-cost carriers, this is going to be central to your sourcing decision. “For the standard in global content in a centralized program, Concur is the common choice,” said Amy Williams of Festive Road. “If deep regional content is the focus, then we are seeing buyers intentionally decentralize their programs to integrate best-in-market tools like Zeno, Atriis, and Trip.Biz.”
Goldspring’s Norm Rose said, “What matters is whether the platform can pull from wherever the fare lives and present it cleanly, and whether the servicing side can touch a booking it did not create.” He also believes it is important to consider content requirements that are specific rather than generic. “[If you need] rail in Europe, a particular set of carriers, regional low-cost content, hotels in markets nobody covers well, everyone says their content is comprehensive. We recommend testing with your own top spend.”
6. Will it implement my travel policy?
Booking is one thing but ensuring that those bookings are made within the constraints of your travel policy is another. If you have a complicated policy, remember to question whether the OBT can manage those nuances.
But if your policy is complex, then maybe this is an opportune moment to reconsider it. “A lot of programs carry outdated policy rules, then score tools on the ability to replicate them. Sometimes the better answer is to simplify the policy,” said Carver.
7. Is the OBT coupled to your TMC?
For many buyers, changing a booking tool is often considered at the same time as changing their TMC. This can have a material effect on which booking tools will be in the shortlist, or vice versa, which TMCs will get the nod. “This is the question that changes the shortlist more than any other, and clients often have not decided the answer before they start,” said Rose. Some tools come bundled with a service model and some do not. Buyers need to be clear about these connections.
But the technology decision and the TMC decision may be more separate than ever, said Carver. “This is the most important structural change and it is not finished. It gives buyers leverage they did not have five years ago.” It comes with a caveat, though; more programs end up with a platform from one company and service from another. This could create more problems than it solves, so testing in real environments can be critical.
8. What are the data and reporting priorities?
Travel buyers often look at reporting quality from booking tools and decide that TMC reporting is better. But this may change—particularly with the rise of AI-powered tools and the fact that some booking technology providers are providing both the traveler-facing booking tools and the agent-facing tools. Some are one and the same—and this can offer more assurance that data generated on both sides of the tool live in a centralized record.
“Every company is going to expect more predictive analytics and real-time reporting. Booking platforms that perform well in this regard will be in a good place to win and keep their existing customers,” said Carver.
9. How much AI is right for your company and how does the tool evolve?
The trillions of dollars swilling around the AI ecosystem means that the hype is enormous. Business leaders are listening to this hype and are demanding their companies adopt AI in order to reap the perceived benefits in terms of cost savings or other efficiencies. Working with a booking provider which has genuinely embraced AI can also give competitive advantage.
Carver offered: “It is important to understand whether the client company is more in favor of an early adopter partnership or legacy type of program. One is not necessarily better than the other but understanding their appetite for risk and change upfront is helpful for developing an RFP strategy.”
10. Will AI platforms consume our data?
All AI platforms, not just travel booking tools, clearly have voracious appetites and the last thing you want is for your travel program data to be used and abused by others. Gee Mann of TravlrID has put together a guide on due diligence for the AI world. He said buyers need to ask this question: “Is customer data, traveler data, booking behavior, preference, prompts, outputs or behavioral information used to train, fine-tune, evaluate or improve any AI model?”
Ask the provider to show you the relevant contractual information. If you opt out, does that mean the products stops working or performs differently? You need to know.
11. Are you looking for agentic booking?
Agentic booking is nearly here but do you want it for your program? Is your company willing to allow agentic tech to handle a trip booking all the way from search to payment? Providers are betting on it. “Truly forward thinking booking platforms will start to consider how a traveler's personal agent may interact with their tools,” Carver said.
TravlrID’s Gee Mann recommends buyers to ask providers what an agent can see and what it can do. Can the access be restricted by traveler, field, purpose, action, recipient or time period? “A connection to the system should not automatically mean access to the whole traveler,” he said. Buyers should also ask platforms to confirm that instructions within travel content—such as email, itineraries and supplier responses—do not contain content that can manipulate the agent. He also advises buyers to pick one transaction and ask the tech provider to show the complete actor chain, including what each participant received and what each was allowed to do.
It is important to separate the roadmap from reality, said Goldspring’s Norm Rose. “Most of what has been deployed in the last 18 months is only assistance,” he observed. “The next step is the tool doing the work end-to-end inside policy, and a few vendors are close. Buyers should separate what is in production from what is on a roadmap slide, and ask for named clients running it, not a demo environment.”
12. What will consolidation mean?
Continued consolidation will create challenges for buyers. “When three or four names on this list have changed shape in two years, buyers must ask not what the roadmap looks like, but what happens to my program if this company is acquired next year,” said Rose.
13. Can the platform really do everything the tech provider says?
This is perhaps the most critical of the questions to ask—and to verify. Is what has been promised by an platform provider for real? Rose warned, “Be skeptical about the beautiful demo that works in 90 seconds.”