Upside’s Big Valuation Shows Hunger for Biz Travel Tech — Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report
Photo Credit: More corporate travel startups are paying attention to how to shift traveler behavior toward smarter buying decisions. Pictured is Upside's app for business travelers. Upside
Skift Take
Travelers get free gift cards, and companies save money on their travel spend. Tweaking traveler behavior through incentives isn't new to the corporate travel space, but investors seem to have finally noticed its potential.
The Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report is our weekly newsletter focused on the future of corporate travel, the big fault lines of disruption for travel managers and buyers, the innovations emerging from the sector, and the changing business traveler habits that are upending how corporate travel is packaged, bought, and sold.
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THE FUTURE OF CORPORATE + BUSINESS TRAVEL
The big news in corporate travel this week is a huge funding round for Priceline co-founder Jay Walker's new business travel venture Upside, and everyone in the corporate travel ecosystem should be paying attention.
Upside, which rewards business travelers with gift cards for making bookings that save their companies money, raised $50 million at a $200 million valuation, showing that major travel and technology are taking the company seriously.
“We’re going straight for the unmanaged business traveler,” said Walker when the company was announced last summer.
