Booking Tools Boost Dining Service

Corporate online booking tool providers are adding restaurant reservations functionality to help buyers corral expenses.

Brenda Brooks, American Express Business Travel Global Advisory Services' senior practice leader of online optimization, said dining expenditures account for 9 percent of American Express corporate card data. Meanwhile, 92 percent of Amex Business Travel customers using the Rearden Commerce-based Axiom platform have enabled the ability to reserve restaurants online. "Clients are applying best practices in driving adoption in some adjacent services that they apply to air, car and hotel, which not only increases spend control and visibility, but also communicate policies at the point of sale," Brooks said.

Unlike Rearden Commerce, executives from the major online booking tools said they have not seen a notable increase in usage of these capabilities However, Amex's Brooks said the growth is "steady as more finance and procurement groups are involved with spend as a whole. It's gaining ground with those audiences and employees are realizing the productivity savings benefits."

In efforts to be the leader in the dining reservation category, Rearden Commerce integrates with seven sources, including Zagat and Gayot for content and online restaurant reservation platform OpenTable, as well as offers a 10 percent discount through Rewards Network's preferred restaurant program.

Rearden also uses compliance tools that enable users and administrators to select spending criteria within policy, highlight restaurants in the Rewards Network and employ automated invitations.

In 2008, Rearden plans to add capabilities to book private dining rooms, order catering and provide information on "green restaurants," said Rivka Spivak, general manager of dining for Rearden Commerce.

By year-end, Concur Technologies also plans to integrate into expense reports generated by the Concur Expense reporting tool name information from automated dining invitations through OpenTable. The company added OpenTable reservations to its Cliqbook online booking tool in June, said Concur executive vice president of technology Tom DePasquale.

Meanwhile, GetThere, which released its OpenTable capabilities in spring 2006, plans to announce a partnership with a similar online restaurant reservation system for Europe, said Suzanne Neufang, vice president of product marketing and user experience. She said GetThere's clients' dining reservations have shown a "steady, but slow adoption as corporations have a lot of big spend categories to handle and they haven't gotten to dining yet."

Amadeus E-Travel Management also has similar restaurant reservation capabilities through its E-Concierge business productivity service platform, which launched in December 2006 and uses restaurant content from 10Best, according to Mary Keagul, vice president of e-commerce product strategy and operations for Amadeus North America. In the "near future, the company plans to add E-Concierge capabilities for restaurant reservations onto mobile devices," she said.

ResX has elected not to enter the online restaurant reservation game, but does have the ability to integrate with a corporation's preferred provider, said TRX ResX Technologies president Shane Hammond.