BCD Travel, TripIt

ATLANTA - With an eye on helping business travelers manage life on the road, BCD Travel today announced it would soon offer clients an integrated set of services from TripIt, an online itinerary platform widely hailed by road warriors for its ability to help them easily organize and share travel plans with colleagues, assistants and family.

Under the agreement, BCD Travel, the world's third-largest travel management company, will offer corporate clients TripIt-powered services that meet the evolving needs of travelers and the business goals of travel programs. TripIt allows travelers to share itineraries online with anyone in their professional or social networks. TripIt enables corporate travel managers to meet traveler-satisfaction objectives while squeezing more value out of travel spend. BCD Travel plans to begin offering TripIt services in early 2010.

"TripIt has been rapidly adopted by business travelers at small, medium and large companies alike, including travelers from all of the 100 top traveling corporations," said Scott Hintz, co-founder and vice president of business development for TripIt. "With this move, BCD Travel is the first TMC to truly embrace the power of openness to satisfy the needs of their business travelers, within the context of a company's managed travel program."

As part of the BCD Travel-TripIt offering, BCD Travel will transfer a traveler's booking to TripIt, which delivers a master itinerary to the traveler's personal TripIt account. Travelers access the itinerary online, via mobile device or through professional networking sites. What they see is a rich itinerary packed with weather forecasts, maps, directions and other important details related to the trip.

In addition, travelers can use TripIt's "Itinerator" to combine information about restaurants, event tickets and even personal travel – elements typically not booked by a travel agency. The traveler integrates this information simply by forwarding confirmation emails to [email protected].

TripIt travelers, like users of the popular iPhone from Apple, have access to a growing and evolving ecosystem of applications developed by third parties. Using these apps, BCD Travel clients and travelers will be able to meet a variety of business needs using mobile utilities, expense solutions, corporate social networks and more.

As part of the agreement, BCD Travel will provide its clients with preferred access to TripIt Pro, a new premium service for frequent travelers. TripIt Pro offers itinerary monitoring with mobile alerts, alternate flight options, frequent-traveler point tracking and other tools aimed at road warriors.

"Because our travelers are living increasingly mobile and socially networked lifestyles, we're building ways to harmonize those needs within a corporate travel program," said April Bridgeman, BCD Travel's senior vice president of strategic marketing and technology planning. "TripIt fits perfectly within our vision for providing the best post-booking traveler experience available and embracing practical social features that add value to clients and travelers. This is an important first step in our journey to offer our clients the best resources to enhance the traveler experience."

About BCD Travel | As a leading provider of global corporate travel management, BCD Travel simplifies and streamlines the business of travel. This benefits our client's organization on every level: from the bottom-line to the business traveler. BCD Travel operates in more than 90 countries on six continents, with US$14 billion in total sales and a combined worldwide work force in excess of 13,000. BCD Travel is a BCD Holdings N.V. company. For more information, visit www.bcdtravel.com.

About TripIt | TripIt, the trip management company, helps people organize their travel plans no matter where they book. Travelers simply forward their travel confirmation emails from over 500 sites to [email protected]. TripIt automatically creates a master itinerary that combines all their travel plans plus weather, maps, restaurants and more. With TripIt it's easy to share and collaborate on trips with friends and colleagues in social networks. TripIt itineraries can be accessed via online, mobile device, iPhone app, personal calendars and social networking sites. TripIt is an open itinerary platform that works across hundreds of travel sites and with a growing ecosystem of travel and mobile partners. The new TripIt Pro premium service for frequent travelers automatically monitors travel itineraries, providing mobile alerts, alternate flight options, frequent traveler point tracking and automated trip sharing. More at www.tripit.com.

BCD Travel Contact:
Thad Slaton

[email protected]
404-422-6169

TripIt Contact:
Peter Harrison
[email protected])
415-738-2359