ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BCD Travel today unveiled its newest product platform, SolutionSource®, a one-stop shop of third-party travel technology solutions. The marketplace, aimed at business travel managers and sourcing executives, provides recommendations and enablement of innovative third-party technologies geared towards program optimization.
“It’s a tremendous time for innovation in travel. By building an open platform, SolutionSource opens the door to emerging technologies for our clients,” says Yannis Karmis, BCD Travel’s senior vice president of product planning and development. “Our open ecosystem allows technology providers to integrate with our proprietary platforms to create a seamless travel management experience.”
The travel landscape has changed significantly over the past few years, with a surge of technology providers offering unique and targeted travel solutions. This wave of innovation brings new capabilities that allow travel managers to optimize spend, influence traveler behavior, drive operational efficiencies, and more. BCD Travel has made it easy for their customers to discover and integrate some of these best-of-breed technology partners into their program.
“As the global travel operations manager for the leading business social networking service, I pride myself in my knowledge of travel technology,” said Leslie Hadden, global travel operations manager at LinkedIn. “Keeping up with technology is time consuming. SolutionSource will not only help me identify relevant travel technology, it will also give me confidence that the solutions I choose for LinkedIn will easily integrate into my travel program.”
With SolutionSource, travel buyers gain quick access to expansive technologies in key categories including: risk management, price assurance, flight disruption, program optimization, and more. Freebird, Rocketrip, Fairfly and Yapta are among the initial SolutionSource Authorized Partners.
- Freebird is a simple mobile solution that empowers business travelers to skip the line and instantly book a new ticket after a flight disruption in just three taps on their phone.
- Rocketrip reduces corporate travel costs by rewarding employees for saving.
- Fairfly ensures you always pay the fairest price for airfare.
- Yapta's corporate travel solutions provide price assurance for both air and hotel.
Expansion with additional partnerships will continue throughout 2018.
“We’re excited that BCD is launching SolutionSource to provide corporate travel buyers with a marketplace where they can easily identify the products and services that will add unique value to their programs,” said Dan Ruch, Rocketrip's Founder and CEO. “With its global presence and reputation as a trusted advisor, BCD Travel is in a unique position to introduce travel buyers to Rocketrip's Incentivized Behavioral Change platform and other truly innovative and valuable technology.”
“For technology partners, SolutionSource provides a platform to integrate their solutions and grow their reach within BCD’s global client base,” says Irina Matz, BCD’s director of product planning. “To enable these partners, we recognize the need to expose the right technology in a way that’s easily consumable and scalable. We’ll continue to develop standard APIs and developer tools to support our SolutionSource strategy.”
Beginning today, clients can browse SolutionSource to identify travel technology solutions to customize and improve their travel programs.
SolutionSource becomes the third product platform offered by BCD Travel. It joins a portfolio that also includes TripSource®, a platform to increase traveler engagement, and DecisionSource®, a platform to use travel data to drive intelligent programs. For more information about SolutionSource, visit solutionsource.bcdtravel.com.
About BCD Travel
BCD Travel helps companies make the most of what they spend on travel. For travelers, this means keeping them safe and productive, and equipping them to make good choices on the road. For travel and procurement managers, it means advising them on how to grow the value of their travel program. In short, we help our clients travel smart and achieve more. We make this happen in 108 countries with almost 13,000 creative, committed and experienced people. And it’s how we maintain the industry’s most consistent client retention rate (95% over the past 10 years), with 2016 sales of US$24.6 billion. For more information, visit www.bcdtravel.com.
About BCD Group
BCD Group is a market leader in the travel industry. The privately-owned company was founded in 1975 by John Fentener van Vlissingen and consists of BCD Travel (global corporate travel management), Travix (online travel: CheapTickets, Vliegwinkel, BudgetAir, Flugladen and Vayama), Park ‘N Fly (off-airport parking), Airtrade Holland (consolidation and fulfillment) and joint venture Parkmobile International (mobile parking applications). BCD Group employs over 14,000 people and operates in 108 countries with total sales of US$26.4 billion, including US$10.4 billion partner sales. For more information, visit www.bcdgroup.com.
