Most reports suggest that business travel is on the mend and may even match or exceed levels seen in 2019. More online players are keen to get in on the action and are adjusting their efforts accordingly.
This is especially true for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and the unmanaged segments.
Large companies such as Booking.com have had business travel divisions for some time, but are now making new efforts to attract this market segment.
Booking.com said its Booking.com for Business division is designed for the small and medium-sized business market and that it has been building out the service in recent months through partnerships with Expensify and Traxo.
The company declined to say how big an opportunity it thinks business travel represents, but highlighted internal data showing that business travelers are staying 5% longer on average in the first half of 2023 compared to 2019.
The company acknowledged that its business travel services had been put on the back burner during the pandemic for understandable reasons, but said improving customer experience took time.
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“It has always been our plan to bring the power of a well-run corporate travel program to the small business sector and find a way to do it at scale,” the company said.
Meanwhile, China's Trip.com Group has detailed its business travel efforts in recent months and reported rising revenue. In its first-quarter 2024 financial results, the company said corporate travel revenue rose 15% year-on-year to $71 million.
Business travel falls under the group's Trip.biz division, which also recently launched a booking and approvals app for the sector, allowing travellers to book flights and hotels, as well as access post-booking services such as refund requests, and allowing trip managers to manage approvals in a central place.
Trip.com Chief Operating Officer Schubert Lu said in a recent interview that the company wants to expand its business travel footprint in Asia first, and is developing ways to offer an all-in-one solution while still providing some degree of localization.
Regional Promotion
Wego and Cleartrip are also focusing on the region. Wego has focused on leisure travel in the Middle East, but is looking to expand its focus to business travel. It acquired business travel and expense management platform TravelStop a little less than a year ago to help build out its business travel offerings.
Wego CEO Ross Veitch estimates that corporate travel in the region is worth about $40 billion, most of it unmanaged.
“We have a lot of these people at Wego right now, and it's pretty self-explanatory. They're travelling from Dubai to Riyadh for a limited period of time, and it's a lot of independent travel. It was clear to us that this was an opportunity to tailor something a bit more to this market.”
Part of the strategy will allow employees to sign up to the platform themselves and invite their colleagues, after which HR or finance departments can “claim accounts,” Baich said.
He added that the majority of sign-ups were coming from the unmanaged segment, which he described as “the biggest opportunity.”
“The second most common group is people who use traditional travel management companies or have relationships with travel agents.”
Continuing to work with customers across Asia Pacific and India, Travelstop has recently launched Wego Pro on its platform and is committed to further developing its services for business travel.
“We're working to properly integrate supply from Wego to Wego Pro and are doing a lot of work around single sign-on.”
The company has noticed traditional travel agents signing up to use the service, and expects further growth from launching a B2B2C product. It is also looking to acquire “blue chip TMC companies with great customer bases” as part of its business travel strategy, Veitch said.
Cleartrip, the India-based OTA that was acquired by Walmart-owned Flipkart in 2021, also has ambitions in business travel.
The company, which competes with the likes of MakeMyTrip and Yatra, recently launched its OOO (out of office) business travel tool and said it is focusing on small and medium-sized businesses as well as large corporates.
Sukesh Shetty, head of B2B at Cleartrip, said the company “hopes to capitalize on the growing demand for efficient corporate travel management solutions.”
“Recognizing that a large portion of our customer base are business travelers who need more sophisticated tools, we developed OOO, a one-stop travel management platform.”
The technology offers features such as automated compliance with booking and travel policies.
Shetty added that the company is also working to resolve pain points such as invoicing and limited customization with OOO. Further enhancements in the pipeline include better expense consolidation, more flexible travel options, and partnerships with suppliers to offer better rates to travelers and their employers.
Shetty said business travel is a big growth opportunity for the company, and that the company aims for the segment to account for about 40% of Cleartrip's overall business.
While hotel groups and international airlines have highlighted the recovery of business travel in their recent earnings, the success of traditional leisure online operators will depend on their ability to deliver their products with relevant content and features to travelers. They will also have to compete with the ambitions of incumbent travel management companies such as American Express Global Business Travel, BCD and FCM, which have publicly stated their plans to target small businesses and unmanaged traveler groups.
