American Express Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel joined BCD Travel in the race to bring managed travel elements to the use of mobile applications by corporate travelers. Having announced its plans last summer, BCD was scheduled this month to launch automated itinerary synchronization with TripIt for an initial group of six corporate customers.
"We're very close to going live," said TripIt co-founder and vie president of business development Scott Hintz. "I probably spend half my day on BCD stuff right now, and we talk to a lot of their clients directly."
The base TripIt product allows users to forward emailed itineraries to TripIt and build an interactive online itinerary that also feeds into mobile apps. Synchronization with a travel management company allows the data to load up automatically and reflect any changes made by online booking tools or agents. Like Amex and CWT with their respective partners, BCD also is offering discounts off subscription pricing for TripIt's premium service, which provides flight status, alternatives, gate information, bag locations, loyalty program tracking and trip sharing for a rack rate of $69 a year.
Officials with American Express Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel during the past two weeks said there was more to come in terms of details on their respective mobile strategies after separately announcing partnerships and pilot tests with TripIt rival WorldMate. CWT also announced a partnership for SMS-based mobile functionality with conTgo, which an Amex official early this year said is a partner as well, while Amex said it became the launch TMC customer for Rearden Commerce's booking tool-agnostic mobile solution.
For Amex, WorldMate is roughly the "international" partner while Rearden would be offered to U.S.-based travelers, according to American Express Business Travel director of innovation Zaki Fasihuddin, who late last month said the company would reveal an "overarching strategy in a few weeks." He emphasized the company's desire to build a "proprietary platform. We're not going to partner with a vendor for technology and just slap our branding on there. It will be a differentiated offering."
"We're trying to build upon the WorldMate platform with our own proprietary set of features," Fasihuddin continued. "The feature set tends to overlap with their premium version, but we'll be working with them on the development roadmap for the next 12 months to two years and laying out the vision for the platform. So you'll see, over time, a clear divergence [in] where Amex is taking its mobile platform from where some of these companies have their existing product base today."
WorldMate's premium rate is $99 a year, and includes flight alerts, alternative flight suggestions, itinerary sharing and other data integration and social networking functions. Fasihuddin said Amex was exploring negotiated pricing options for that product. For now, Amex would be using WorldMate's BlackBerry app. The Rearden option includes BlackBerry, a mobile Web site version and an iPhone app. "Research we have done with end users shows the BlackBerry is still the preferred device for road warriors," Fasihuddin said. "But we will be working with other platforms."
Although they, too, are establishing preferred pricing and automated itinerary synchronization with their partners, neither Bridgeman nor CWT president for suppliers, products and technology Andrew Winterton was enthused about the idea of a "proprietary" solution as described by Fasihuddin.
"We're not a software development company," said BCD senior vice president of strategic marketing and technology planning April Bridgeman. "We're a TMC and we're just really pleased with the roadmap TripIt has and has shared with us. I'm not interested right now creating a proprietary solution." TripIt's open API is the key differentiator between it and WorldMate, say the former's executives, and allows all sorts of customization in that developers anywhere can create their own apps.
BCD is planning shortly to announce add-on apps which travelers can use with their TripIt accounts. Bridgeman didn't specify which applications. One example of an app that integrates with TripIt's data is flight punctuality predictor FlightCaster. "We don't think we should be bringing in every hot app, but rather the services that travelers have already validated," she said.
CWT's Winterton is most interested in bringing a semblance of central management to companies whose travelers largely have been buying and using these solutions without the benefit of company integration and consolidated purchasing. As for the idea of coming up with some sort of proprietary version, the former Amex executive said, "We're all trying to create a unique value proposition. It's something we look at, but my personal experience is that it would be difficult to define something that isn't popping up somewhere else. There are new apps coming out almost daily.
"We have gone with conTgo and WorldMate for the launch because they have a very clear view of how they can contribute in a managed corp environment," said Winterton of what the company called the "first phase" of an "extensive" mobile plan. "That has made coming to an agreement much easier. But there are a lot of very flexible organizations out there, and I'm quite sure we will work with a number of them both as customers ask us to work with them and as we understand where they create value in the corporate marketplace."