Concur buys TripIt

With the additional benefits offered via TripIT Pro and with 3 growing income streams it makes sense why Concur acquired them for upto $120 million

Concur LogoConcur has announced today that it has acquired privately held TripIt which was one of the leading mobile and web 2.0 trip management platforms.  Concur is one of the world’s leading providers of integrated travel and expense management solutions for business.  While currently Tripit has both a free and premium paid TripIt Pro it is the first open itinerary platform which makes it ideal for Concur but also good for TripIt who know have access to 15 million people and 10,000 businesses.

TripIt is unique platforms is that it is fairly progressive in sign-in features it offers as you can sign-in via Google Apps, Facebook or Google Accounts.  Unlike a number of other platforms TripIt early on in the process allowed you to just email your itinerary to them once you had received a confirmation and it would automatically import all the relevant details and with a single click you could have this information showing on your web calendar via iCal.  TripIt offers Facebook Connect so you can share your trips with friends and family within Facebook but it also allows the platform to advertise on your Facebook wall attracting more users to its platform without having to spend a cent on customer acquisitions.

TripIt Revenue Model

As part of a growing number of businesses TripIt uses a hybrid model of Google DoubleClick Ads on their website but also via affiliate income using LinkShare for a large number of their listed travel applications that work with it’s data. The other part to their revenue model is the additional benefits offered via TripIT Pro so with 3 growing income streams it makes sense why Concur acquired them for upto $120 million in cash and stock with performance bonuses payable over the next 30 months.

OpenSocial Application within Linkedin

TripIt also uses Open Social to link enable users to link their TripIt information via an application to their Linkedin profile to facilitate networking within your professional network when you might be in the same city.  It does prove very useful when attending conferences, seminars and training courses as your contacts who are not connection on your TripIt network can organise to meetup.

TripIt Features

  • Add your trip to your calendar via iCal Feed
  • Start Auto Import your Trips from Gmail
  • Join your Company Travel Group
  • Travel Apps & tools – build your itinerary, stay organised, share your plans

TripIt Mobile Itineraries

  • TripIT for iPhone
  • TripIT for Android
  • TripIT for Blackberry
  • Mobile site via M.TripIt.com
  • But no TripIt for WindowsPhone7…

TripIt for Business

As part of the interest from Concur would have peaked when TripIt provided the ability for others to plan your travel from the office.  Offering any business the ability to cut costs by organising the whole trip starting at creation of itineraries, organising multiple travellers in one platform and keeping your travellers on the road with less questions about where they should be and at what time.

Point Tracker

One of the cool features of TripIt Pro is that you can see all your frequent flyer, car rental & hotel points in a single dashboard including bonus information such as when your points expire and how many miles/dollars you need before you reach the next status level.

TripIt Pro

  • Travel with privileges
  • Get flight refunds if eligible
  • Find alternative flights
  • Track all your reward points
  • Know about flight delays, cancellations and gate changes
  • Automatically share your travel plans

Concur was smart

So overall it’s a very smart move by Concur to let TripIt build up to be a decent platform before purchasing it to improve it’s travel & expense platform which targets small, medium and corporate business.  You can see a quick overview of how TripIt can benefit Concur as it helps fill the gap prior to this chart where people are possibly still planning a trip so Concur can better understand the booking life-cycle of their clients travel patterns.

One integrated solution that saves you time and moneyI use TripIt currently and do find it’s a great application but I know I don’t use it to half of it’s potential but that might change in 2011 if more travel is required and schedules are going to be tighter.