July 6, 2010
Concur acquires Tripit for up to $120 million
More mobile phones means more advanced management services for itineraries and expenses
Travel and expense management site Concur announced Thursday that it has acquired mobile trip management service Tripit for up to $120 million. Concur is paying approximately $27 million in upfront cash and $44 million in stock and unvested restricted stock units, with an extra $38 million payable based on “additional consideration over time.”
Over 15 million people currently use Concur to organize trips and expenses.
“The advancement of mobile solutions has changed the way business travelers buy, share, manage and expense their travel plans,” said Steve Singh, Concur’s chairman and CEO. “There is a universal need to bring order to the chaos of travel and make life better for business travelers. That is true for both managed and unmanaged travel. Together, we solve challenges along the entirebusiness travel process – from booking, through in-trip activities and sharing trip information, to post-trip expense management and reconciliation.”
Tripit helps travelers by organizing all the details of their trip into one itinerary that includes everything from essential info like flight times and locations to more personal data, like maps and directions, notes, photos, recommendations and more. The service also says it makes it easier to inform family, friends and colleagues of trip details.
The $49/year Pro version of Tripit, targeting more frequent flyers, goes a little further with mobile alerts and emails regarding flight delays, cancellations and gate changes, complimentary 1-year memberships to Hertz #1 Club Gold and Regus Gold, and a system that constantly monitors whether alternate flights are available or whether you are eligible to get a refund for the current one.
As a mobile-focused service, Tripit itineraries are accessible from Android, BlackBerry and iPhone.
While Concur is a service specifically focused on serving businesses of all sizes, Tripit was developed for all kinds of travelers, business or not. I contacted Concur to see if Tripit’s service would be changing in any way after this acquisition. The company’s reply:
Nothing changes with the TripIt service. Anyone can continue to sign up for TripIt, which will continue to provide all the great TripIt features that travelers have been enjoying for years. In addition, you’ll also see great new innovations and integration with Concur’s services, which specifically serve the needs of business travelers.
Good to know.
Founded in 2006, Tripit raised a total of $13.1 million in institutional funding from Azure Capital Partners, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV) and others. Its last round was a $7 million Series C in March 2010.
Vator's Bambi Francisco interviewed Tripit's co-founder and president Gregg Brockway last summer; check out the video below.
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About TripIt
TripIt, the trip management company, helps people organize and share their travel plans no matter where they book. Travelers simply forward their travel confirmation emails from over 1,000 sites to plans@tripit.com. 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, free Android, BlackBerry and iPhone apps, personal calendars and social networking sites including the free LinkedIn travel app.
TripIt is an open itinerary platform that works with a growing eco-system 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.
TripIt Founders
TripIt was founded in San Francisco in October 2006 and launched in September 2007. The company has raised $13.1 million from investors that include O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV) and Azure Capital Partners. The TripIt co-founders are an experienced team of travel and technology executives:
Gregg Brockway, President – Former president of Classic Vacations (an Expedia company), and co-founder and chief product officer at Hotwire
Scott Hintz, VP Business Development– Former senior vice president of product at Hotwire, and strategy consultant at Accenture.
Andrew Denmark, VP Engineering – Former engineering director at Opsware, and chief technology officer at CityRealty.com.
TripIt Technology
At the heart of TripIt is the Itinerator, which automatically creates structured trip itineraries from the unstructured data in travel confirmation emails. It also aggregates related data from other websites to provide useful travel information, like weather, maps and directions. The Itinerator is an open technology platform that works with all major travel websites and all major email systems. TripIt's goal is to provide one place for all travel information, accessible whenever travelers need it.
TripIt has also been architected for social networking and includes many options for trip sharing and collaboration. Travelers can share trips with people inside and outside their TripIt Network, and post plans on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Closeness alerts tell travleers when their trips overlap with other people in their TripIt network. TripIt Company Groups tracks and shares the dates and locations of employee business travel, and TripIt for Google Apps has Company Groups and a several Google gadgets to help organizations and individual travelers manage their business trips.
TripIt has an open API that powers My Travel on LinkedIn and TripIt for Facebook Connect. Additionally, hundreds of developers use the API to intergrate TripIt with their web services and mobile apps.
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