Japanese hotel reservation service integrates with Concur's new Japanese Travel Solution to provide service that helps manage spend through increased efficiency and transparency.
TOKYO and BELLEVUE – Rakuten Travel, Inc., a subsidiary of Rakuten Inc., one of the world’s largest internet services companies and Concur Technologies, Inc,, a leading global provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, announced a new partnership that will provide Concur Travel users worldwide access to make reservations from suppliers offered by Rakuten Travel’s hotel reservation service. The combination of Rakuten Travel’s inventory (one of Japan’s largest Internet hotel reservation sites) with Concur Travel (the cloud-based travel booking tool) provides a solution that enhances convenience for business travelers and gives their companies the ability to better visualize corporate costs.
Concur Travel is now available to the Japanese market as of today, while the integration with Rakuten Travel is expected to be available later this year. Concur will make this additional travel booking content available to both its Japanese based clients as well as its worldwide client base.
By integrating with Concur’s advanced solutions, Rakuten Travel expects to increase the number of reservations made by corporate clients as well as capture the demand for hotel stays in Japan from more than 18 thousand companies and 20 million overseas users worldwide.
Overview of Concur Travel for Japanese Market
The Japanese configuration of Concur Travel provides corporations within Japan or with employees travelling within Japan, the ability to book airline tickets and hotel reservations that comply with their companies’ policies on-line. Reservations and other itinerary information is also automatically integrated with Concur clients using the Japanese configuration of Concur Expense. Concur Expense supports IC Card integration with Suica and Pasmo cards (introduced in February 2012). The integration of Concur Travel & Expense provides companies with visibility into their T&E spending to enable smart spending decisions and effective budget management.
Other features and functions of Concur Travel include:
- The ability to streamline corporate travel booking while automatically enforcing travel policies and providing visibility to non-compliance.
- Search and book relevant in-policy travel from multiple Global Distribution Systems (GDS), with support of negotiated corporate discounts for both domestic and international travel.
- Access to Japanese domestic hotel reservation services with integration of Rakuten Travel providing employees with the broadest choice of hotel content based on their companies travel policy, all within one on-line booking tool.
- Access Concur Travel & Expense through smartphone and tablet devices. This enables business travellers and managers to book travel, capture expenses, submit expenses and approve claims while on the go.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
