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TripSync - The On-Demand Travel Manager for Small Businesses

Guest post by: Evan Newman

Article Overview: TripSync is the hottest new travel tool on the internet. It's FREE to use and there are NO booking fees. Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz can't say that. Specially designed for small and mid-sized businesses, only TripSync has these great features: *Book & Hold - allows you to lock-in your airfare for 24hrs with no commitment. *Drag & Drop - allows you to modify your reservations right from your calendar. *Mobile - lets you book Air, Car and Hotel from any web-enabled mobile device. Whether you're an Administrative Assistant or a Business Traveler, TripSync makes your life easier. TripSync is the on-demand travel manager. Available anytime, anywhere you need it. Try TripSync today. What are YOU waiting for?

TripSync - The On-Demand Travel Manager for Small Businesses

A little over a year ago, I was asked to view a demo of a new online travel tool that was going to change my life. I've been in the corporate travel industry for 25 years and I'd thought I'd seen it all. In fact, I had the opportunity to work with the developers at Sabre (the parent company of Travelocity) as the client advisor when they were developing their first online corporate travel booking tool. The internet was still in its’ infancy, but I was working at Goldman Sachs at the time and they always insisted on being on the bleeding edge of technology. So, I worked very closely with the folks at Sabre and the end result was that they produced Sabre Business Travel Solutions, the first online travel tool for the corporate environment.
Over the next several years, competitors came along and gave them a pretty good run for their money. There was GetThere, ResX, Cliqbook and few others but they all had one thing in common. They all had very complex rules engines that enabled a company to restrict what the user was going to see. All large corporations that have multi-million dollar travel budgets are concerned about policy compliance. They have negotiated airfares, hotel and rental car rates. In order to receive these discounts, they need to make sure that these vendors get the lions’ share of their business. As a result, these online booking tools were programmed to show preferred vendors, preferred rates and enforced policy compliance. The companies that adopted these tools were driven by one factor - cost.

You see, a number of years ago when the domestic airlines cut out the commissions that they paid to travel agencies, the agencies had to reinvent themselves in order to stay in business. The travel agency business had been able to support itself through the commissions earned from the airlines. When they lost that revenue stream, they started charging transaction fees. Depending on what part of the country you're in, transaction fees can range from $25 to $45 per ticket issued. When the online booking tools came out, the transaction fee for an online booking was $5 to $10 per ticket issued. So it was in the best interests of the company to get as many employees to adopt these online booking tools rather than calling their in-house travel department or their travel agency. The only catch was that in order to get a low online transaction fee, the company had to commit to a minimum number of bookings per month that would originate from the tool. If you fell short of the minimum, you still paid for them.

Enough of the history lesson. Now we’re in a world where internet travel sites abound but the primary players are the Big 3: Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz. If you don’t work for a large company that has access to negotiated rates and corporate travel booking tools, you (or your administrative assistant) are using one of the Big 3 to make your reservations for your business trip. If you’re not using one of them, you’re probably going from airline site to hotel site to car site to make your reservations. Not only is this time consuming, it creates a nightmare scenario when you need to make a change. When you book a business trip on an internet travel site, you’re just looking for trouble. First, there are the fees: for booking and for changing. Not only are they charging you to book your trip, they are pressuring you to make a split decision to purchase that ticket. We’ve all been there before. You go to one of the Big 3 to see who has the lowest airfare but you only have a 5 minute window to make that purchase. If you don’t, your session expires and when you re-search the itinerary, the price is no longer available. I don’t know about you, but I am rarely able to get an authorization from my boss in that 5 minute window. It can be infuriating when I know I could have gotten the airfare for less had I been able to get the okay quicker. Then there are the times when I’m told that there could be a meeting in Chicago on Friday but we won’t know for sure until later in the day. If I buy my ticket now, I might get stuck with a ticket that will go unused. I could have it re-issued if that happens, but chances are I’ll forget about it and the ticket will go to waste.

Remember that demo I was asked to view last year? Well, it did change my life. The demo that I saw was for TripSync and shortly after seeing it, I knew I had to be a part of that company. TripSync is the hottest new travel tool on the internet. It's free to use and there are no booking fees, specialized contracts or other “fine print”. Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz (or their corporate versions: Travelocity Business, Expedia Corporate and Orbitz for Business) can't say that. Specially designed for small and mid-sized businesses, TripSync has a tremendous value proposition:

• No Risk Travel Booking.
Use the “Book & Hold” feature to hold reservations and “lock-in” rates for up to 24 hours.
• Manage Travel Directly From The Calendar.
TripSync automatically creates and updates reservations and appointments and informs others of the changes.
• Simple Company Travel Management.
Administer travel policy, control compliance, pre-trip approvals and post-trip reporting.
• Make and/or Change Reservations Directly From Mobile Devices.
TripSync can be accessed from a BlackBerry®, Treo® or any other web-enabled mobile device.

How many times have you arranged a business trip (or asked your admin to arrange it) and then find out you need to change it? Not an easy task, is it? With TripSync, you don’t have to worry about changes. You can make a reservation and put it on hold for 24 hours. If you need to make a change to a reservation, you can use the drag and drop feature to modify it right from your Outlook calendar. How cool is that? No more calling service centers and waiting on hold. No more change fees when you can change it yourself!

Do you remember the last time your flight got canceled? Do you remember that endless line that you stood on to get re-booked, only to find out when you got to the counter that the person in front of you got the last seat on the last flight out of there that night? That’s why we developed TripSync Mobile. We’ve all been there. We know there’s nothing worse than that stranded feeling. With TripSync Mobile, you can book Air, Car and Hotel from any web-enabled mobile device while your plane is taxiing back to the gate!

TripSync lets you manage travel for one person or for the whole company. Since it’s integrated with Outlook, an admin that manages multiple calendars can just as easily manage everyone’s business travel too. So, whether you’re a business traveler or an administrative assistant, TripSync will make your life a whole lot easier. Visit TripSync.com today and give it a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

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