Concur's Mike Koetting on TripLink's Maturity

• Lag time on airline integration
• Is using TripLink an endorsement of supplier-direct booking?
• Connecting to Lufthansa

Air supplier integrations with TripLink will start going live soon, Mike Koetting told BTN payment and expense editor JoAnn DeLuna, joining hotels, car rental suppliers and travel management companies. That piece of the puzzle will bring Concur's tool closer to its hyped purpose: pooling data booked outside corporate booking tools to give travel buyers a view on the full trip.

BTN: Is TripLink where you want it to be?

Koetting: By now, we have all the major car rental suppliers confirmed to participate and three of the four leading hotel brands in the U.S.: Marriott, Starwood and IHG. United [will be] the first carrier going live, in the relatively near future. Air Canada and Lufthansa [are] following. We have European suppliers participating with the expansion of TripLink into Europe. We also have 13 travel management companies that are live, participating and integrated with TripLink. We have momentum in all three areas—over 6,000 clients that have purchased TripLink. Having said that, there's still a lot of work to be done. We're still rounding out the U.S. with a few more airlines and hotels. Western Europe is probably a primary focus in the next year with a couple more carriers and hotels. I suspect we'll look to Australia and perhaps Asia after that. But right now we're focusing on rounding out the U.S. and Western Europe.

BTN: In the United States, car rental and hotel suppliers are up and running on TripLink. Why does it take so long to get airlines going?

Koetting: [For United] that's a timeline they control in their development teams, but I know they're far along. It's really a function of the airlines' legacy systems. Some airlines have approached the integration with TripLink as one part of a broader reengineering effort that they're doing at their websites, but it requires that the airlines coordinate the development teams for their websites, loyalty programs and e-commerce. All those areas have to collaborate to create a solution. Some suppliers have found the integration to be quite easy and straightforward. Uber and Airbnb are examples of suppliers that integrated quite quickly.

BTN: TripLink is meant to bring out-of-channel bookings home to travel buyers, and Concur recently sponsored a Global Business Travel Association survey that found that travelers were less satisfied with online booking tools from their companies or TMCs than with other booking options. What does Concur take away from that?

Koetting: One: There's always room for improvement for Concur and our peers to continue to improve the online booking tool experience. Some of the things we've developed in just the last year regarding the fare-families functionality help make the tool more compelling for travelers. Second, it speaks to the continuing need for travel management programs to find a way to capture the spend that happens at the supplier-direct sites. It yet again reinforces the need for a solution like TripLink.

BTN: Is the volume coming from supplier-direct sites significant?

Koetting: We've seen tremendous growth in the number of TripLink bookings coming into the Concur system. Today, the majority of those bookings are still travelers forwarding itinerary confirmations to Concur or TripIt. As suppliers come onboard, the number of supplier bookings increases fairly dramatically, albeit from a very low base. IHG has been out there now for two years; Marriott just came on board; Starwood a year ago.

BTN: Some say tools like TripLink actually encourage travelers to book out of channel.

Koetting: We're really not trying to encourage people one way or another to go to supplier sites. We're simply saying that if they choose to go to a supplier site, they should be able to get a corporate discount and the information should come back [to the corporate]. When we started this conversation three years ago and we sort of mislabeled it "open booking," travel managers were initially very resistant to acknowledging that there was this issue [of invisible spend]. Now, almost every travel manager understands and acknowledges that there's some degree of invisible spend in their program. There was a concern that somehow embracing TripLink implied that the company was endorsing supplier-direct booking. That's probably the biggest and last myth that we have to overcome. Just because your company enables TripLink in an effort to gain visibility to supplier-direct bookings does not imply an endorsement of supplier-direct booking.

BTN: So what will it take to overcome this myth?

Koetting: We're beginning to roll out reports that help clients see the scope of invisible spend in their program. [They show] how much travelers expensed in air, how much they booked through Concur travel, and here's the gap that's invisible. We're providing those reports for air, hotel and car and rail. It helps grow awareness of the scope of invisible spend within our clients. That's a great way to start the conversation without necessarily encouraging more supplier-direct spend. There are some clients who do have more of an openness to open booking, but most clients are still primarily focused on just getting visibility to the existing blind spend. We've reached critical mass—in terms of supplier participation, TMC integration and now clients who have purchased the product—that we should start seeing an accelerated adoption of TripLink and greater visibility of participating customers over blind spend.

BTN: What about Lufthansa, which is chasing a direct-connect strategy?

Koetting: We're actively partnered with Lufthansa on proving out the best path forward for clients and TMCs. We can support Lufthansa via Travelfusion [Concur's access point for content from low-cost carriers and direct connects] today, but the TMCs need to do significant implementation on their side. That has been the gating factor in going to market within the online booking tool. Generally speaking, we pursue a direct connect in Concur Travel if that content is not available via GDS. If it's not available in the GDS and it's relevant business travel content, then we will secure a direct connect.