In the evolving travel management company landscape, BCD Travel is positioning itself as the "pick-and-choose" option among global TMCs, and the company is leaning heavily into its Tripsource platform as the focal point for that offering.
This summer, BCD launched the "next generation" of its Tripsource platform, linking content, data and BCD's third-party technology partners into a single source. BCD EVP of product planning and development Yannis Karmis said the grand vision for Tripsource is akin to the apps and websites people are used to with banking.
"You can use them as much or as little as you want, but they have one website and one mobile app, and increasingly, you can do the majority of tasks that you want through their technology," Karmis said. "You can use us for making bookings, changing bookings, updating your profile, checking in on existing trips, making sure that your flight is not delayed, getting information about your last invoice. All the things that we do for a traveler, our answer is increasingly going to be, 'It's available to you in Tripsource.' "
Tripsource's content layer is one of its foundational pieces, with connections to global distribution systems and aggregators as well as BCD's own direct connections, according to Karmis. In August, BCD announced an agreement with United Airlines for direct access to its content, and the TMC also has established direct connections to German national railway Deutsche Bahn and U.K.-based hotel brand Premier Inn.
BCD continues to expand those direct connections to keep up with the evolving definition of content, Karmis said.
"[Suppliers] are all investing a lot of money in their own systems and capabilities, and we want to make sure that our content strategy is mirrored up with their content strategies in order to bring the best of their content, functionality and service capabilities into BCD," he said. "We might get that through a GDS partner, an aggregator or by going directly, but we want to be able to look our customers in the eye and say, 'We've got access to that capability that's important for your program.' "
That content foundation has helped enhance the user booking experience in the next-gen Tripsource, and it has added other features, such as new capabilities specific to travel arrangers, BCD SVP of traveler experience and commerce Stephanie DeNote said. That includes the ability to share, copy and load trips, which helps with frequent travelers who go to the same destination multiple times, she said.
BCD is not locking clients in to use Tripsource for booking, however, as it can also connect with other booking tools to let clients continue to have that unified experience, she said.
"Many of our customers may not be ready to make that big leap on a solution they've been on for a long time," DeNote said. "But they are choosing [to] do trip management and integration of other tools that the company wants to use into that centralized portal that is TripSource."
In a recent interview with BTN stablemate The Beat, BCD global CEO Stephan Baars said BCD "maintains a good relationship" with Concur even as it has partnered with competitor American Express Global Business Travel for the integrated Complete offering. BCD, meanwhile, recently announced its own expanded partnership with Emburse, which Karmis said "will be one of the most extensive travel and expense integrations in the industry."
As a TMC, BCD can provide more complete and advanced data than an online booking tool to Emburse, while Emburse is able to provide reciprocal data to BCD for analytics in Tripsource, Karmis said. As a TMC, BCD knows air and hotel bookings that are made, but the Emburse data can add in such data as hotel room service, coffee and rideshares ordered during the stay for a total cost of trip, he said.
"We're looking at some more advanced integrations down the road on how policy gets synced between our companies," Karmis said. "If you're pre-approved for something, and that's what you booked, that's what shows up in the expense report. We want to be able to take and tie all of that together much more seamlessly."
Bringing AI to Program Data
The Tripsource Insights analytics framework, meanwhile, launched earlier this summer to enable clients to work with data with natural language. It works with booking data, payment feeds from multiple card providers, engagement data from call centers, shopping data from Tripsource as well as third-party data from BCD marketplace partners.
The Insights data analytics platform launched to a small pilot group earlier this summer and since has expanded to another pilot group, with general rollout planned for the end of the current quarter.
In the coming weeks, BCD will launch an AI Analyst with predictive analytics in Insights, which can make recommendations for actions based on data and scenarios. For example, a query as to what air policy changes could drive savings next year could bring a recommendation of a business-class travel restriction and supplier switches, modeling how much savings could be expected, which routes would be most affected and considerations of traveler impact.
A lot of BCD's focus now is on building out more AI engines and recommendation engines, Karmis said. In May, the TMC announced its Model Context Protocol framework across Tripsource, including models that bringing shopping capabilities into a single interface and a data-harvesting interface.
That will continue to play into BCD's plans for adaptability and flexibility with Tripsource, he said.
"As a platform, how each client chooses to deploy AI, it's going to be unique to their program," Karmis said. "We've got great online booking capabilities for those who want it, our agent capabilities are foundational, and our Insights are growing and expanding around AI. That brings a lot of new innovation back to our customers."