Can Coupa really take on SAP Concur? It has a chance, mainly due to its products and services that are outside the traditional purview of travel management.
Most corporate travelers would rather think about anything else than booking and expensing travel. That's why companies are scrambling to help reduce that pain point for road warriors. We expect Coupa, Certify, Chrome River, and SAP Concur to acquire more travel tech companies to help seize the opportunity.
Services that automate smarter buying decisions in corporate travel are part of a wave of transformative change that will cause the corporate travel ecosystem to evolve.
Travel startups pivoting from a consumer business toward a B2B focus is trendy, with founders and CEOs believing that there will be fewer marketing woes and reduced competition. But get in line when it comes to joining the droves of startups trying to sell to big corporations, hotels and travel agencies. The sales hurdle can be almost as intractable as the marketing roadblock.
Innovation and change have always been driving factors in the evolution of travel, but now it’s happening at a much more accelerated pace. We're no longer tracking industry changes by looking at the calendar, but instead by looking at our watches.
Yapta pivoted toward the corporate travel market several years ago, and its hotel-rate tracking tool could be useful for business travelers looking to take advantage of fluctuating hotel rates.
Just because corporations have negotiated fares with their preferred airlines doesn't mean these corporations don't have to be vigilant about carriers lowering their fares. A lack of vigilance about these price drops means businesses are wasting money, and leaving themselves open to charges of wastefulness to foes in the corporation.
When it comes to airfare volatility for business travel, airfare-tracker Yapta has a dog in this fight. Still, Yapta's study shows that corporations, which are undoubtedly acutely aware of the issue, need tools to track the wild world of airline pricing.
The global travel industry is going through a lot of disruption, and the biggest sectors include the sharing economy and ground transportation, as well as one large potential winner in the hotel booking sector.