Travel Leaders Corporate now resells the automated version
of Yapta's RoomIQ and FareIQ reshopping services, branding the offering as
Price Optimizer. Travel Leaders Group SVP of corporate sales Michael Boult said
Travel Leaders already was reselling Yapta but has become the first travel
management company to leverage Yapta's new automated
rebooking capability; Travel Leaders will not offer manual authorization
of rebookings as an option for travel managers, agents or travelers. The
expedited nature of automatic rebookings is where the big savings come for
clients, Boult indicated. However, Travel Leaders Corporate president Gabe
Rizzi noted, "Of course, if certain factors necessitate a personalized
review, the solution will channel the reservation to the client's travel
advisor." Reporting for Travel Leaders corporate clients will break out
the automated rebookings and associated savings.
The TMC also has broken into two tiers its Business Travel
Insights data product, which is powered by Tableau. BTI Plus will carry on the
work of the previous BTI: incorporating travel, card and expense data and
helping travel managers track spend and analyze it in search of savings that
could come from changes to travel policy or sourcing. The new BTI Essentials,
meanwhile, strips out card and expense, for which many Travel Leaders clients
don't have programs or data. For both Essentials and Plus, Travel Leaders also
has enabled travel managers to drill down into spend and savings opportunities
by traveler, by department or by region. Travel Leaders also has added
benchmarking against thousands of corporate travel programs via Prime Analytics,
according to Boult.
Travel Leaders Corporate also has added to its core offering
the ability for clients' business travelers to book activities and tours during
their downtime or bleisure time. The TMC brands the offering as Concierge.
Travel Leaders gleans the traveler's destination airport, accesses the TripAdvisor-owned
Viator marketplace via application programming interface and gathers its top
activities near that airport. Travel Leaders then pushes the options to
travelers via their itineraries or email; SMS is coming, Boult said. Travelers
then book via Viator using a personal form of payment. Boult said artificial
intelligence ultimately will produce activities curated to each traveler. Boult
said Travel Leaders earns commissions from Viator for any bookings made.