Expedia, Booking.com, and other leisure travel booking sites have been helping leisure travellers book their travel on their sites for years now, however now these sites want a larger slice of the business travel market.
The obvious choice is the small business market, which are usually companies and employees without stringent policies on which airlines, cars, hotels, and booking sites are acceptable to use.
Expedia’s chief marketing officer, David Doctorow has estimated the online market for business travel (currently unmanaged) to be close to $120 billion globally.
20-30% of Expedia customers are already using the site for business travel, leading Expedia to launch their rewards program Expedia+ Business for small businesses and their employees.
The site aims to make it easy for companies, allowing small businesses to sign up for free, link employees to the company account, and book the business travel on Expedia. The company will earn a $100 hotel coupon for every 10 hotel nights they book, which can either be shared with employees or used towards travel costs.
Employees who enrol are upgraded to silver status in Expedia+ Rewards, the consumer rewards program, and corporate bookings also count towards their rewards in the consumer loyalty program.
One of the biggest advantages of the program are the reporting tools which the companies can use to analyse and track employee travel. Reporting can make a huge difference to businesses, and allow them to measure their expenditure on business travel.
Booking.com was the first to point its nose towards the small business travel market, with Booking.com For Business, enabling small businesses to create their own company accounts with the booking giant, and to encourage their employees to book their rooms on the site. They also receive reporting tools to better manage business travel expenditure.
Source: www.gotcredit.com
The two programs have some key differences. While Booking.com For Business is hotel-only, and doesn’t have a loyalty program associated wit hit, Expedia+ Rewards allows the booking of cars and flights, along with a focus on hotels to accrue rewards.
Another big difference? Booking.com’s small business travel program is global, while Expedia’s is for US only.
Travel Agents Still the Better Choice for Business Travel
While these sites allow small companies to book travel, there really is no better way to book business travel than through a travel agent which is experienced in business travel needs.
This negates the need for companies to spend time juggling employees, and allows employees to focus on the purpose of their trip, instead of having to handle the details themselves.
Travel agents often also have access to the best deals available for hotels, and can easily forward requests to the hotel, as well as choose one which is specific to a business travellers needs.
Many hotels are now offering business centres within the hotel, or cater specifically to business travellers. Travel agents have the best up to date information on which hotels are best suited for business travel, meaning that businesses and their employees don’t need to trawl the internet and waste time looking for cars, hotels, and transportation.
And the biggest advantage of using an agent? If anything goes wrong, and flights need to be rebooked, or the hotel can’t find your booking, the agent can quickly and easily sort the problem out without you needing to spend hours on the phone to customer service.
