Corporate travel data specialist Traxo signs deal with TMC groups Advantage and WIN

Deal covers business travel networks that transacted $15 billion in spend in 2019

Travel data and itinerary intelligence firm Traxo has signed a partnership with independent travel agency group Advantage Travel Partnership and global travel network WIN.

The Dallas technology and business insights specialist will have its service promoted to the two organisations members under a new ‘Traxo for TMCs’ offering.

London-based consortia Advantage claims to be the largest independent travel agent group in the UK, while WIN has around 6,000 TMC member locations in 75 countries.  Combined, their total 2019 annual travel spend was over $15 billion.

Traxo chief executive Andres Fabris said: “When the COVID pandemic lockdowns started occurring, corporate travel managers and TMCs worldwide immediately realized they had serious gaps in their business travel data.

“Despite company policy, employees inevitably had booked their travel ‘out-of-policy’ or ‘off-channel,’ and therefore, that booking data was invisible during this critical time.

“As a result, companies had no idea if their employees were stuck in a country that had just closed its borders or had recently returned from a virus ‘hot spot,’ and needed to be quarantined.

“Basically, all the missing travel bookings created a last-minute duty-of-care crisis.  Subsequently, the most progressive TMCs realised that the ability to service off-channel bookings can actually become a competitive advantage and create a value-added, revenue-producing service.”

The new partnerships will enable corporations to automatically share all of their business travel data, regardless of booking channel, with their TMCs in real time, enabling their agencies to provide enhanced traveller duty of care, and better auditing of total corporate travel spend.

Julia Lo Bue-Said, Advantage chief executive, said: “We’re delighted that Advantage Travel Partnership, with its 200-plus TMC members and the international WIN Global Travel Network, of which Advantage is the majority shareholder, are Traxo’s first UK partners.

“Duty of care is higher than ever on travel managers’ agendas, and therefore it’s absolutely invaluable for TMCs to be aware of their clients’ employees’ travel itineraries in real time, regardless of whether they were booked by the TMC or not.

“Advantage and WIN are committed to providing access to the most comprehensive portfolio of tools in the market to ensure members can best serve the needs of their clients.”

Traxo claims that compared to other corporate travel data capture tools that require travellers to manually forward each confirmation email, its solution requires no training to use.

The travel bookings, including cancellations or trip changes, are automatically captured as they are made, enabling the TMC and the travel manager to make immediate adjustments for risk mitigation and cost savings.

Traxo for TMCs provides corporate travel agencies with GDPR-compliant, access to clients’ non-TMC booking data.

TMCs refer their clients to Traxo for implementation, and once live, the aggregated non-TMC booking and spend data is available to the corporate’s TMC via online reporting tools and API integration.