Travel technology company Vibe has signed a new partner status deal with Expedia Partner Solutions and “rewritten” its corporate travel platform.
The company has a strong leisure client base and works with the likes of Qatar Airways to power the airline’s holiday booking website, as well as Aer Lingus, but is now focusing on the corporate travel sector.
Speaking to Buying Business Travel on the first day of the Business Travel Show/Travel Technology Europe at London’s Olympia, Matthew Chapman (pictured left), chief technical officer, said: “We’re rolling out a rewrite of the front end, so there’s rich imagery and a ‘no manual needed’ approach.”
The company claims Vibe Corporate “improves the way TMCs work with their suppliers, accessing content across multiple product types using a single platform to aggregate GDS, NDC and multiple direct connect connections”.
Chapman said he believes many online booking tools can be too complex and that Vibe offers an easy-to-use, intuitive booking interface.
It currently works with six TMCs, including Capita Travel and Events and CTM Europe, but wants to grow that number. Currently, its leisure/corporate travel split is 80/20.
With its official EPS partner status, and clients such as Capita, Chapman added this sends a message to TMCs that “they can we see we’ve got a quality focus”, adding EPS recently culled its travel technology partners from “hundreds down to tens”.
Vibe has adopted EPS’s newest API architecture, EPS Rapid, which connects to 500,000 properties with rich content. Rates can be held for up to ten minutes in the system.
Simon Goddard (pictured right) has meanwhile joined the company to spearhead the corporate travel growth and was recruited last month as director of solutions.
BBT caught up with Chapman at the show: