It's evident that corporate online self-booking remains a high growth area as two industry-leading providers in recent weeks revealed strong performance figures and forecasts.
Sabre Holdings' GetThere said its system processed more than $8.1 billion in air, car, hotel and rail reservations in 2006, up from $6.3 billion in 2005. Concur Technologies cited faster-than-expected adoption of its end-to-end online booking and expense suite and record revenues of $29.2 million, 52 percent more than a year earlier and $1.7 million more than it expected, in the December quarter.
There is room for further growth, but researchers at PhoCusWright last year predicted an eventual maturing of the marketand a slowdown by 2009.
For GetThere, third-party distributors played a major role in helping to push annual bookings past 10 million last year. Agency and corporate reservations grew 33 percent in Europe, 20 percent in Latin America and 64 percent "off a small base" in Australia and New Zealand, the company said.
GetThere said it has "more than 100 travel agency resellers in North America, including 21 travel management companies that signed new agreements in 2006." A "smaller, exclusive" Premium Partner Program last year generated 97 percent more year-over-year bookings.
One such program member, Ovation Travel Group, said that last year its roster of clients using such tools grew by 80 percent. "The company achieved a 107 percent increase in the number of online transactions in 2006 compared to 2005," according to Ovation. "Through customizations of the tool, Ovation has enabled its clients to access unique features including searchable Web fares from multiple sources, the ability to book Amtrak and Eurail, a pre-trip authorization procedure and integration capabilities with expense management systems."
Expense management market leader Concur said it has cross-sold on its "end-to-end solution" about 200 customers, or 5 percent of the firm's overall customer base of 4,000. About 120 of those customers came on board in the December quarter.
"Over time, it's going to be harder and harder to look at cross-selling because literally everything we're selling going forward is the integrated travel and expense platform," said chairman and CEO Steve Singh. "The opportunity is substantial in that it really brings travel adoption up. Typically, online adoption on travel alone is much lower than online expense reporting services. Combined, this can drive greater adoption of the booking tool."
GetThere's top 150 clients reported an average adoption rate of 68 percent last year, the firm said.
Both companies have a variety of initiatives underway to continue overall growth.
Concur aims to "get from 4,000 customers to 40,000 customers. Our current investment priorities put us on a track to achieve that objective over the next decade," Singh said. The company is developing a "Travel 2.0 vision" to integrate electronic receipts for hotel, car and other travel vendors into both the booking and expense processes. Concur also is growing its sales force.
In addition to continuing its agency distributor program, GetThere this year will finish integrating the "Travelocity" user interface and focus on its DirectMeetings component, as well as regionally specific functions to support multinational expansion. Registrations on direct meetings rose by more than 80 percent last year, said GetThere general manager Bev Heinritz.