Concur's recent acquisition of Hipmunk may be a techie story. Or it may be a business story. It is certainly a very important story for anyone involved in contemporary business travel management.
Hipmunk is a travel metasearch tool of the Kayak and Trivago ilk. However, it is also making use of numbers that make it a business travel tool. Hipmunk sorts travel results not just by price, but also by factors that are important to business travellers such as duration of flight, number of stopovers and hotel location. Its diary integration and hotel map search allow business travellers to compare hotel and flight options based on the specific business meeting schedule and location.
The acquisition is just one more example of the increasing importance of consumer technology and methodology to business travel.
Not only does it reinforce the fact that business travel technology innovation comes from the leisure side; it also demonstrates how more and more business travel is being selected and booked by the traveller him or herself. It is also about how business travel decision-making is similar to that for leisure travel and where it differs.
Hipmunk's ability to incorporate time-sensitive information such as flight duration, number of stopovers and location of hotel into its search is an acknowledgement of the importance of total trip time in business travel. This is significant because this functionality makes it more appropriate for business travel decision-making.
Destinations compete to sell themselves to consumers because the destination and timing tends not to be fixed for leisure trips.
However, the destination and the time of the trip is fixed in business travel — no sense in looking at flights to Singapore on the 10th for a meeting in New York on the 11th — but the decisions about what specifically to book — and when — are flexible.
Hipmunk — and now Concur — appreciate how valuable time is to a business trip and therefore the duration of flights and number of stops are shown with price and schedule. Likewise, the time required to travel between hotel and meeting location is important so hotel location enters the search function.
Concur, which started life as an expense management specialist, then grew into T&E through acquiring a self-booking tool and a travel itinerary tool. It is now on its way to becoming an end-to-end, one-stop shop solution for business travel just like its owner, SAP, is for business.
This acquisition shows that it is focused on creating tools specifically for frequent travellers who tend to be business travellers. It is about managed travel with an emphasis on the importance of time and increasing the productivity of a business trip.
It is also about tomorrow. Hipmunk is also known for its work in artificial intelligence-powered travel search and travel bots.
It will soon be able to say "This is flight is convenient, within your price ceiling and fits your schedule. Why not book it?"