Cohen first showed BTN editors the TripActions mobile
platform at a bowling alley in Chicago in 2015. This year, the CEO celebrated
TripActions' "unicorn" status as a startup valued at more than $1
billion.
Unlike many emerging apps and technologies coming into the
managed space, TripActions has gone macro, not micro. It has fashioned itself
as a new kind of technology-first travel management company and is building a
commercial platform that relies on hotel commissions, Cohen said, but more on
actually charging customers for service. TripActions has not taken incentive
payments from distribution providers and doesn't rely on global distribution
system technology to support its agency systems. "The GDS is just another
content channel for us," Cohen told BTN at the Global Business Travel
Association conference this summer, rattling off plenty more content partners
like Expedia, Priceline, Booking.com and direct feeds from low-cost European
airlines.
TripActions' omnichannel content philosophy necessitated
infrastructure innovations. The company was working toward what Cohen called a "trip
ID," which could include a passenger name record from Sabre for a portion
of the trip, along with segments or itinerary elements from an aggregator or
direct from a supplier. "When you chat with [a TripActions agent] and
change a leg, we immediately know that it impacts other parts of the trip, so
we're asking, 'Hey do you also want us to change your hotel?' Internally, we
don't look at this as a PNR. … We found a way to [merge all the trip elements
from all the sources] and mask the complexity."
The company also is working on complexity issues for
end-user travelers on the mobile app. With lots of content sources and lots of
choices, artificial intelligence and machine learning engines need to function
behind the scenes to deliver the right content choices to the user. Cohen claims
90 percent accuracy on predicting what the user will choose, but TripActions
hasn't pulled the trigger on automating booking. "We don't think the
market is ready," he said.
Skepticism remains in the user community about
how well TripActions can scale and if it can serve global, large-market
companies. That's Cohen's goal, and he sees the opportunity "everywhere"
to take business from more traditional players. If the company sticks with
smaller and midmarket clients for now, the competition among solutions trying
to get at this business—from both startups like TravelPerk, TravelBank, WTMC
and traditional players like Concur Hipmunk, FCM's CTGo and Business Travel
Solutions by CWT—is fierce. But TripActions seems to be a driving force among
the competition. While investors have shown strong interest in other startup
corporate travel solutions, they are pushing a huge number of chips at
TripActions: a total of $231.5 million after closing a $154 million, Series C
funding round in August.