A service from Traxo will
enable booking data from more than 200 Airlines Reporting Corp.-member airlines to flow to duty of care
providers, helping corporate travel managers track travelers who book directly.
Corporates will enroll for the service directly with
airlines. The first iteration of the offering, being developed with United, identifies travelers via their frequent-flier numbers and provides a checkbox so the traveler can identify whether the trip is business or personal. Identifying the traveler's employer happens on the airline side, according to Traxo chief commercial officer Cara Whitehill. Other methods of identifying travelers and their associated employers could come in the future, she said. For business
trips, Traxo facilitates the flow of booking data to the relevant duty of care provider. The system also
processes flight changes or cancellations automatically.
Unlike
Traxo's Filter email tool, which parses data from the confirmation
emails suppliers send to employees' corporate email addresses, the new service does
not rely on data from the corporate's email system. Instead, Traxo receives the
booking data directly from the airline's reservation system, according to a
Traxo spokesperson.
The service is somewhat similar to the existing Traxo
Connect platform, which captures direct bookings and funnels that data to
corporate travel managers, as well as to third-party service providers like
rate reshopping, flight disruption and duty of care specialists. It differs
from Connect in two ways, though. First, it focuses solely on duty of care,
acting as a "fast lane" that does not require corporations to sign up
for the full Connect solution, according to Traxo CEO Andres Fabris. Second, Whitehill said, the new
service does not send the booking information to travel managers themselves
for reporting and analysis.
Fabris targets roll out with United for this quarter, and Traxo expects to enroll other
carriers in early 2020. ARC will act as a go-to-market partner, facilitating payments for the service from its member airlines to Traxo.
Corrected on Oct. 18, 2019, at 5:45 p.m. Eastern to reflect that ARC does not play a role in the transmission of booking data.