Simple meetings solution Groupize is leveraging existing
pathways to solve an adjacent challenge for clients: guest travel. Contractors,
consultants, recruits, interns … a host of travelers fall outside the formal "employee."
A corporation may not have or need travel profiles or ongoing payment methods for
these travelers, but it does want them to benefit from managed supplier
relationships and be able to count guest travel toward contract thresholds.
Several Groupize clients recognized overlap between the
simple meetings solution's functionality and what they'd like to see in a guest
travel tool, particularly the integration with Concur, the leading managed
travel booking tool in the market. "Many organizations have a lot of travel spend that looks
like a meeting, smells like a meeting but isn't exactly a meeting," said
Groupize CEO Charles de Gaspe Beaubien. "Our latest enhancements enable
our customers to extract additional value out of SAP Concur and scale their use
of Groupize."
The
tool takes advantage of the companies' previous work to integrate Groupize registration
sites and Concur booking sessions. For guest travel, the integration allows
users to create shell profiles and single sign-on to SAP Concur. Guests can
book within Concur Travel via a link provided by the host organization and thus
gain access to negotiated air and hotel rates. An integrated ghost card can be
used for air, while hosts could leverage Groupize's virtual card integrations
for hotel, which would pre-authorize and limit hotel spend to defined
parameters. The guest receives a mobile version of the virtual card for check-in
at the property and an integrated itinerary via Concur. The Groupize platform
offers a communications engine for invitations, confirmation and dialogue with
the guest traveler.
The
platform obviously works for groups of guests, as well as for combined lists of
employees and guests who may need to gather for an event, but it also works for
single travelers in a space that has attracted more attention of late, particularly
among high-growth companies that are managing a lot of recruits and
contractors.
Groupize
will compete directly with Pana in the guest travel space. Pana, which provides
its own chat-based booking experience and started its life as more of a leisure
travel booking and concierge platform, pivoted to this niche just over a year
ago. It has gained traction with travel management companies like BCD Travel as
part of its SolutionSource platform and has additional TMC relationships on the
horizon, according to CEO Devon Tivona. The Beat, also owned by BTN parent
company Northstar Travel Group, reported today that Groupize has signed 25 TMC partners
this year to mark 45 total TMC relationships. Like Pana already, Groupize is
signing on to the SolutionSource platform. Both companies also sell direct to
corporates.
Groupize's
ace may come in the form of its partnership with Concur, a tool which already is
built into the workflow of many corporates and TMCs. On the other hand, Pana
specializes in the mobile experience, with more of a "concierge"-style
strategy that could appeal to companies that are in fierce competition for
talent.