And then there are the metasearch engines such as Hotelscombined and Kayak looking for a piece of the action.

Of course, online travel agencies (especially Booking.com) are still immensely powerful players and then, most recently, Room Key crash landed on the scene with a promise of multi-brand search utopia.

On the periphery are the startups, such as Room 77, which launched in a blaze of publicity and has since gone on to raise over $10 million in funding from, amongst others, the backers of ITA Software, General Catalyst.

It now turns out that travel expense management giant Concur (also owner of TripIt) was part of the funding round last summer when it took a minority stake in the business, an investment revealed today when Concur announced record results of its first $100 million quarter in revenue for Q4 2011.

Clearly Concur sees something in Room 77 that it feels is worth taking a punt on.

So with 12 months now passed since launch, and having backers with a pretty high pedigree, on both the investment and operational side of the industry, is Room 77 about to start shouting a little louder?

It would appear so.

Founder and chairman Brad Gerstner says: “We think there’s a lot to be done in hotel metasearch – we’re going to out-Kayak Kayak by focusing like a laser ONLY on hotels just like Hotels.com and Booking.com, but better.”

Fighting talk, indeed.

Back over at Concur, CEO Steve Singh is also talking up his company’s profile, referring to Room 77 as the “Zillow of hotel rooms”.

Zillow co-founder and executive chairman Rich Barton also happens to be an investor in Room 77, of course.

Singh says Room 77 would benefit both hoteliers and their customers if its content about individual hotel rooms could be integrated into hotel CRS and property management systems.

“It would allow hoteliers to monetize their properties at a more granular level and push choice to the end customer,” Singh says.

He believes resistance from hotels would “change over time”. He adds: ”I run a business that gets resistance all the time.”

Concur made a relatively small investment in Room 77 and a “more substantive one” in Taxi Magic, which enables business travelers to purchase ground transportation and integrate the expense into the Concur Expense system.

Singh says two things drive Concur’s investments: the ability to create as much content choice as possible for business travelers, and the ability to make it available to customers.

“If we can help foster that kind of innovation, bring it to market and make it available to our customers, then that delivers a tremendous user experience,” Singh says.

The Concur CEO argues that mobile is blurring the lines between corporate travel and consumer tools.

Singh believes corporate travel policies are diverse and he could see business travelers using Room 77 to pick hotel rooms in conjunction with corporate travel policies.

Alternately, he adds, perks outside the parameters of corporate policy could be billed to business travelers’ personal credit cards.

Asked if he could envision a larger investment in Room 77, Singh says: “What guides us is this: if it is innovative and delivers greater choice to end customers, we are interested in developing it.”

NB: Additional reporting by Dennis Schaal.

The result is concurforce, a piece of kit that is accessible from handheld devices and the web and allows frequent business travellers to manage their travel and expenses,  interact with colleagues via salesforce chatter and access itineraries via TripIt.

Concur acquired TripIt earlier this year in a deal worth up to $82 million and has since been beavering away on integration.

The idea is that road warriors will save time by having access to the travel and expense, social and sales and CRM technology all on the go thus making them more productive.

Concurforce is not expected to be available until later this year but it is another sign of the demand from the business travel sector for social tools originally associated with the leisure sector.

A study released last week from the American Red Cross showed just how reliant people have become on social media networks for news and information, especially in an emergency.

The Concur Salesforce deal is interesting in light of ongoing debates on corporate strategy on social media  as well as ongoing mobile and data security issues.

• Big promotion at Travelzoo with operations director in Europe, Stephen Dunk, now overseeing the entire region as managing director. Each country manager around the continent – France, Germany, UK and Spain – will report into Dunk, the former managing director for TV at Teletext Holidays who originally joined Travelzoo as country manager for the UK in 2007. Travelzoo CEO Chris Loughlin was the former Europe MD before moving to the US in 2010.

• Oh, the games online travel agencies play. Orbitz introduced Orbitz 50 Faves, a game which gives Facebook fans the chance to win 50 vacations worth up to $15,000 each. The game+, which runs through Sept. 18, calls on players to “like” the Orbitz Facebook page and then they receive bids to win a trip. Chances of winning a trip increase the more of the user’s friends are playing the game, Orbitz says.

• Concur says its mobile app now e+nables business travelers to complete in-policy reservations directly in the app from Android, Blackberry, iPhone and iPad devices. In other mobile news, Concur says it is rolling out a Locate & Alert service. Travelers “check-in” with their mobile devices and their employers can locate them and send voice, text and email messages.

• The Airlines Report Corp. (ARC) released a new subscription service, AeroTrend, which is geared to help financial analysts and consultants create airline industry forecasts. AeroTrend provides airfare ticket data from 2008 and offers weekly updates.

• Data cruncher TRX enhanced its Traveltrax ancillary fees reporting tool, displaying fees by category and merchant. The tool is designed to provide corporations with a broader view of their travel spend to enhance their negotiations with airlines.

Those numbers come from Concur chairman and CEO Steve Singh, who says TripIt had 2 million users when acquired and is on track to double that number to 4 million customers by the end of 2011.

Singh says TripIt added 500,000 users in the first three months of 2011 and another 500,000 by the end of June, reaching the 3 million mark.

Parsing the numbers, one in three TripIt users use the service at least part of the time on their mobile devices.

Singh says Concur will make a big push to get TripIt to 10 million users and once TripIt reaches that level, then the service can be “monetized in very interesting ways.”

“And while the revenue contribution from TripIt remains very modest in fiscal ’11, we expect it to become a more meaningful contributor to revenue in fiscal 2013 and beyond,” Singh says.

TripIt, along with Concur’s Breeze expense management platform, enables Concur to target the unmanaged business travel market, although Singh notes that plenty of road warriors in managed travel programs use TripIt, as well.

TripIt recently invested $5 million in Yapta and plans to integrate its airfare tracking and refund service into TripIt Pro, a subscription service.

“Our objective in both products [TripIt and TripIt Pro] is to keep driving more and more functionality into those services to make it invaluable and indispensable to any business traveler,” Singh says.

Toward that goal, TripIt is off to a pretty good start.

Singh’s comments came during Concur’s fiscal third quarter 2011 earnings call.

For Concur’s fiscal third quarter, which ended June 30, Concur’s net income fell 37.6% to $2.26 million on $89.4 milliion in revenue, a 19.3% hike.

And the immediate beneficiary is Concur unit TripIt as users of its premium TripIt Pro service, which is geared toward business travelers, will be able to access the Yapta airfare tracking and price assurance services. With Yapta, users can recieve partial refunds from U.S. airlines when the fare drops after a booking.

Yapta had already powered flight-tracking for TripIt’s free service, and now this will be extended to TripIt Pro when the two parties integrate the service.

And, the Yapta-Concur alliance benefiting TripIt is just the beginning of the partnership, the companies say, with both parties looking to integrate Yapta’s service further into Concur’s travel management products.

The companies say the alliance is a natural given Concur’s focus on more efficient travel spend.

For Yapta, the partnership will punctuate its push into being a provider of business travel services, says Jeff Pecor, a Yapta spokesman.

Concur has been on an investment drive in 2011.

In January, Concur acquired TripIt in a deal worth up to $120 million, and in April Concur invested $40 million in India online travel agency Cleartrip.

And, now Concur’s latest move is a $5 million investment in Yapta.

The transaction is part of a Concur buying and investment binge, all part of its effort to assert market leadership in various global markets. For example, only two month ago, Concur took a $40 million stake in India’s Cleartrip.

Steve Singh, chairman and CEO of Redmond, Wash.-headquartered Concur, says of the pending GlobalExpense acquisition:

This acquisition reflects our commitment to continue growing Concur’s investment and presence to serve the large untapped travel and expense management market in Europe. The acquisition expands and enhances Concur’s extended services offering by leveraging GlobalExpense’s core strengths in receipt validation, VAT and income tax compliance, and thier extensive knowledge of UK tax legislation.

The acquisition is expected to close in Concur’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends Sept. 30, 2011, and could cost Concur an additional £2 million [$3.3 million] based on GlobalExpense’s performance.

GlobalExpense combines Web-based expense-management software with a European audit center that vets customer receipts submitted in prepaid envelopes.

Concur says the acquisition should help it expand into European markets, increase its position among small- to medium size businesses and spread adoption of the Concur Connect Platform

Concur adds that the deal enables it to “gain strong talent on both the technology and business side,” and hasn’t detailed plans on how GlobalExpense’s workforce will be impacted once the deal closes.

GlobalExpense currently provides services to some 200 companies dispersed among a range of industries.

GlobalExpense combines Web-based expense-management software with a European audit center that vets receipts that customers submit in prepaid envelopes.

Concur integrated TripIt for itinerary management. Business travelers can choose to sync their Concur travel plans with their TripIt account and access a consolidated  itinerary from their smartphones or online, Concur says.

In addition to reservations for air, car and hotel, the TripIt itinerary also can display information about dining, meetings and activities, Concur says.

Concur acquired TripIt in January and previously outlined its integration plans.

In other tech changes, Concur rolled out Travel Expense, a solution which enables travelers to request authorization for trips and expenses prior to the trip.

“Now inforrmation flows freely between a user’s travel request, online booking session, travel agent and an expense report,” Concur says.

And, Concur expanded its rail content in the U.K., adding access to thetrainline.com to the Concur booking tool. Amtrak, Deutsche Bahn, SNCF and VIA rail already were accessible through the booking tool, which enables travelers to compair air and rail choices from a single screen.

And, in other developments, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, in partnership with Rearden Commerce,  began to pilot a mobile solution, CWT To Go, on Blackberrys in June in the U.S.

CWT To Go enables users to access their travel itineraries from their mobile devices and check flight status, view alternate flights, choose restaurants and access weather information.

With the pilot on Blackberrys slated to get going in June, CWT says a global rollout of CWT To Go will begin in August on Blackberry, iPhone and Android platforms.

It’s interesting to note that Concur and Carlson Wagonlit have embarked on their mobile paths with different strategies: Concur acquired TripIt and Carlson Wagonlit has chosen the partnership route with Rearden.

TripIt says at around the time of the iPad’s launch, just 9% of TripIt members had snapped up a device. But a recently survey by the company found that a massive 70% of TripIt members now own an iPad, or at least plan to purchase one in the near future.

Much of the existing TripIt smartphone app functionality is included in the iPad version, except engineers have inevitably made significant use of the larger screen.

A user’s itinerary is now plotted as a single navigation thread, with maps and other relevant details included on the same screen.

Other features include a master map of an entire trip, maps for airports and hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues, seat assignments and airport terminal information.

The release of the iPad app comes three months after TripIt sold to Concur in a $82 million cash plus stock deal. The company recently claimed over 300 uses of its API in various applications on the web and mobile.

“I’m not as worried about our competitors as I am about changing consumer behavior,” says Sandeep Murthy, Cleartrip chairman. “It is not so much about the next guy. It’s about moving people into the world of automated online management of their travel services.”

Murthy spoke about the investment and operational partnership with Concur and how he views the market potential.

India has a $13 billion corporate travel market and 90% of it is unmanaged, Murthy says, and it is primed to get much larger.

Today, Cleartrip for Business accounts for less than 10% of the online travel agency’s revenue and Murthy feels that with Concur’s travel and expense prowess, the two can build a comprehensive and integrated offering to tap into the expanding corporate travel market.

Asked for specifics on that integration, Murthy cautions, “we’re only a week into it [the partnership]. It’s too early to say what is realistic and what the timeframe is.”

He adds that the focus is on “how do we scale up for the long term? How do we put the building blocks in place?”

Officials from Concur and Cleartrip began talking about this partnership more than a year ago and Concur was a logical partner, Murthy says.

“We don’t have it all,” Murthy says. “Tracking and reporting, that is not our world.”

While Concur and Cleartrip will focus on distribution through the corporate channel, and hiring sales and distribution personnel in India initially, it’s clear that the Cleartrip-Concur alliance is not just about India.

Cleartrip already has an office in Dubai and plans to expand into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, moving in “a circular radius” as India’s domestic airlines grow their routes, Murthy says.

Mobile also fits prominently into development plans, Murthy says, and the two companies may integrate their solutions, including Concur’s TripIt itinerary management service.

“I have my wish list,” Murthy says.

He adds: “We’re just scratching the surface of what is possible.”

With the Concur minority investment in Cleartrip, Steve Singh, Concur’s chairman and CEO, takes a seat on the Cleartrip board.

Murthy says the two companies will evaluate the size of Concur’s stake over time and enlarging it would be an option.

Concur, which opened an office in India, “has been on an expansion spree,” Murthy says — and it appears to have found a partner with similar ambitions.

The deal sees a new investor in the business in the shape of Valiant Capital, joining existing and major backers in Yatra, Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

Yatra is one of the leading Indian OTAs alongside home-grown businesses MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip, with Expedia and Travelocity also operating in the country (see latest Hitwise India data for latest positions).

The company was launched in 2006 and has since grown to attract an average of $30 million revenue a month with a volume of 10,000 tickets and 350 hotel rooms sold every day.

Yatra claimed a gross turnover of $250 million in 2010. Its last investment round came it at around $32 million.

The company says the investment is likely to fund expansion of its hotels and holidays divisions, marketing in the next wave of Indian cities experiencing signs of growth in ecommerce and some acquisitions.

The investment round comes just days after US-based travel and expense management technology provider Concur took a $40 million stake in Cleartrip.

Rival agency MakeMyTrip hit the US public financial markets in the summer of 2010.

As well as this wave of interest from outside India, some believe there is certainly a lot more money beginnning to float around the industry.

Aaron Gowell, CEO of SilverRail Technologies but a founder of General Catalyst Partners in the US in 1998, says the wider investment market has “started to heat up” in recent months.

Venture capital companies are beginning to invest in strong brands with obvious areas of growth, including online travel agencies, he says.

In so doing, Concur, which caters to business travelers with integrated travel and expense management solutions, takes a minority stake in India’s largest online travel agency and strengthens its recently established presence in the country.

Concur hopes to leverage the marketing partnership and strategic investment to expand its customer base and plans call for the two companies to integrate technologies to address the business travel market in India.

The two companies hope that by combining increased access to India travel content  from Cleartrip, including air, hotel and rail, with Concur’s travel and expense solutions, they can make increased inroads into the India corporate travel market.

Primarily knowns for its leisure travel offerings, Cleartrip also offers Cleartrip for Business, which enables companies to review reports online and then download them into CSV files.

“Together with Cleartrip, Concur will enable clients to capture Cleartrip-generated itineraries for end-to-end travel and expense reporting within Concur’s services,” the companies say.

Steve Singh, Concur’s chairman and CEO, says “it’s critical to focus on the local needs of each market in which we operate.”

He adds that “Concur plans to leverage the synergies of our combined technologies to help us expand our offerings, extend our reach and make business travel easier for the millions of travelers in India.

Asked for more details on the technology integration, Singh says “in the coming months we expect to have more concrete plans and roadmaps to share with our clients who will want to leverage our combined innovation.”

Mobile technologies and TripIt, which Singh characterized as “strategic priorities across the organization,” will likely be part of the mix.

In tandem with the investment in Cleartrip, Concur announced that it had established operations in India.

“Hundreds of multinational companies in the region already use Concur services,” Singh says. “The new office in India enhances Concur’s ability to deliver sales, service and development capabilities to better serve the local needs of the Indian business travel market.”

So, how are Concur and Cleartrip a fit given Concur’s business travel focus and Cleartrip’s leisure travel base?

Singh doesn’t directly answer the question, but says: “Concur is focused on helping our clients manage their corporate travel and expenses. Cleartrip is one of the leading travel portals in India. This deal enables Concur to better serve all of our clients seeking to better manage corporate travel and expense management in India.”

With the investment, Concur gets two seats on Cleartrip’s board.

The new platform, which is an e-wallet of sorts, is called Serve.

Consumers can establish a Serve account online or via downloading an Android or iPhone app, and can fund these prepaid accounts through any bank account; debit, credit or charge card, or from other Serve accounts. Consumers then can pay for services online or offline via any merchant who accepts American Express cards, or send and receive money via Serve accounts.

In other words, you would be able to create a Serve account by transferring $1,000 from your Visa card and then could pay for a vacation online using the Serve card if you book a trip from an online travel agency that accepts American Express.

If you want to take a group of people on a trip and want to share the expenses, you can send your traveling companions funds from your Serve account to theirs, or vice versa.

Do you want to divide walking around money among the family during your getaway? Just set up a Serve account with different sub-accounts — which can have varying rules — and you can divide the spending money for each family member or traveling companion.

Among Serve’s launch partners is Concur, which “will utilize Serve as an expense management and reimbursement method for transactions processed via Concur’s small business expense reporting service, Concur Breeze,” Amex says.

Serve comes with reporting capabilities, which would be essential for business travel applications.

And, “Ticketmaster will offer Serve as a platform for customers to make and collect payments toward ticket purchases from other customers,” Amex says.

In a conference call today about the launch of Serve, Dan Schulman, group president, enterprise growth for American Express, threw around some tech buzz words — altering their definitions — to describe the new platform.

Schulman said Serve is “open source” in that Serve accounts can be funded from almost any source, and he called the platform a “cloud-based application” because the e-wallet is not tied to a single device or operating system.

While Android and Apple apps coincide with the launch, a Blackberry app is coming soon, Schulman said.

The foundation of the Serve platform comes from American Express’ acquisition of Revolution Money in 2010, but Amex has made substantial changes in the interim, Schulman said.

Schulman said the platform will evolve, adding the company views Serve as a bridge to the day when mobile payments using smartphones become possible via NFC technology.

And, Serve has additional ecommerce capabilities. In the coming months, consumers will be able to drag Serve widgets to their websites or social networks, such as Facebook, to become sellers or fundraisers, Schulman said.

“Consumers can easily become sellers within their own communities,” he said.

Serve comes with fees, of course.

There is no fee to set up a Serve account and there are no monthly recurring fees, but there is a 2.9% fee plus $0.30 per load to put money into the account. However, the fee is 0% for cash, and debit and ACH accounts, Amex says.

People to people money transfers using Serve accounts are free, there are no fees to set up sub-accounts and there is no charge to use the widgets.

ATM cash withdawals using a Serve account are $2 per withdrawal, except for the first one each month.

Merchants who accept American Express cards pay the discounted rate for prepaid cards, whether accepting them online or offline.

Serve is available in the U.S. beginning today and international markets will be rolled out this year.

Here are the broad outlines:

• The basic TripIt service will continue to be offered to the traveling public for free.

• TripIt users who are also Concur customers will get a lot of additional expense management and travel functionality — car, hotel and rail bookings; also “expense entry, submission and approvals; credit card data management; and receipt management,” Concur says.

• Concur’s existing mobile offering and TripIt’s will be combined into a single product.

The integrated mobile solution, which is expected to be available by the end of 2011, would incorporate existing Concur expense-related features, including the ability gather receipts by using the phone’s camera.

TripIt features in the combined product would include things like flight-tracking, refund alerts, rewards’ points tracking, itinerary management and trip-details sharing, Concur says.

And, Concur is not taking a walled garden approach to TripIt integration.

Concur says “all itinerary data, whether booked within Concur or through another source, will be automatically available for import into the expense report.”

Concur detailed its plans in connection with a client conference taking place in Las Vegas Feb. 15-18.

It also announced that it established a new set of Concur Connect Platform open APIs for suppliers, travel management companies and other partners.

The deal was announced in the US this morning and sees a healthy return for the company founded in just October 2006.

Terms of the acquisition state that travel and expense management firm Concur will pay “cash, stock and unvested restricted stock units” immediately, with “additional consideration over time that could bring the total value to $120 million”.

The split is $27 million in cash and another $44 million in Concur stock. The deal is expect to close in Concur’s fiscal year 2011 second quarter.

Concur chairman and CEO Steve Singh says the deal illustrates a “universal need to bring order to the chaos of travel”, with Concur’s travel management services and TripIt’s itinerary management uniting to “solve the challenges along the entire business travel process”.

TripIt has won plenty of plaudits in recent years for its method of trip planning by allowing technology to collate and manage trips on behalf of the user.

But the company took off in a major way as more consumers tapped into the smartphone movement. It now has popular mobile apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

The company has a two-tier service – free on the one hand for limited user functionality, and TripIt Pro for the full suite of services.

TripIt co-founder and president, Gregg Brockway, says:

“This is great news for the millions of travelers who trust TripIt as a better way to manage travel and the hundreds of third party developers who are a part of the TripIt API ecosystem. Together with Concur, we can move even faster to realize our vision of making travel easier for even more people and companies around the world.

“It’s also a testament to the passion, hard work, and commitment to excellence the entire TripIt team has demonstrated since day one to be the best at solving tough travel problems to help improve the lives of travelers everywhere.”

Funding rounds for Tripit have taken place regularly, with an initial $1 million in 2007, $5.1 million in 2008 and a further $7 million in April 2010.

How TripIt will integrate with Concur’s technology is as yet unknown, and to what extent.

But the big prize for companies like TripIt, Traxo and TripCase is to build a ubuiquitious itinerary that is held separately to the booking service - an opportunity outlined in an article in September 2009.

The companies say travel bookings made with the Amadeus corporate booking tool are synchronized with Concur’s expense claim solution, enabling business travelers to book travel and submit expenses from one solution and facilitating customer views of  planned versus actual spending.

Concur uses corporate credit card data to prepopulate expense claims, thus speeding the expense claim process and making it more accurate.

The integrated solution is available through Amadeus and Concur sales teams as well as through resellers, and Amadeus and Concur are publicizing the integrated solution at the ACTE Global Education Conference in Berlin.

The alliance meets Amadeus’ need to provided an end-to-end travel and spend solution, and Concur’s goal of offering customers more choice about corporate booking and expense management solutions.

The two companies say they also are “delivering” on the promise to integrate an Amadeus low fare search tool and other Amadeus distribution technology into Concur’s corporate booking tool.

The integration of these mobile solutions comes about as Concur tweaked its partner program, Concur Connect, by adding mobile APIs and web services for third-party developers.

Concur also says later this year its mobile solution will have the ability to incorporate a Twitter feed and the ability to share travel plans on social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Concur’s mobile apps are available on the iPhone, Blackberry and Android plaforms.

In other corporate travel news, Orbitz for Business announced that it will supplement its expense management solutions by integrating IBM’s Global Expense Reporting Solution.

That’s the second public win for the IBM product in two days as Rearden Commerce revealed yesterday that it too has adopted the IBM Global Expense Reporting Solution.

With the flurry of corporate travel announcements proceeding at breakneck speed because of the National Business Travel Association conference in Houston this week, Cornerstone Information Systems revealed it has integrated Databasics Expense Reporting into Cornerstone’s iBank data-management platform.

The integration of Databasics Expense Reporting means Cornerstone’s corporate clients will be able to take booked data from myriad suppliers and capture it in clients’ expense reporting systems, Cornerstone says.

With the Concur-Amtrak agreement, Concur clients can also hold rail or cancel rail reservations, access Amtrak special rates, book multi-segment trips, and facilitate payment and ticketing without any travel agency intervention, among other features, Concur says.

In other news, Concur extended its partnership with OAG by subscribing to an enhanced flights stats service which Concur says updates flight schedules approximately every 20 seconds.

“If I’m in a cab on the way to the airport and open Concur Mobile I can see the gate where I’m departing,” Fred Fredericks, Concur’s vice president, research and development, referring to the new capabilities with OAG.  ”I’m sitting in a meeting and I can see if the flight is on time or if it’s delayed. If you’re a travel arranger using the travel arranger view in Cliqbook, where you can see all the travelers you’re responsible for, you can see who is going to arrive late or on time to be proactive if arrangements have to change.”

“When you combine this new service with Concur Mobile’s pre-existing capabilities to view flight schedules and even change air tickets, it really arms a traveler to be able to stay in control of their travel situation wherever they are, within an application that is linked directly to their corporate travel program and their travel management company,” Fredericks says.

Previously, Concur received OAG schedules through GDS connections, but the enhanced access to OAG enables Concur to speed performance for clients, Fredericks says.

First, as reported, Travelport buys Sprice and picks up some hotel content, and now Concur has entered into two agreements in which it gains access to an additional 460,000 properties (assuming there is no content overlap in Concur’s two deals.)

Concur, which offers travel and expense, and a corporate-booking solutions, plans to integrate 210,000 hotels from hotel.info, which is the international brand of hotel.de AG, with offices in Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and China.

The integration of Concur and hotel.info means corporate travelers will have access both to negotiated rates from their companies’ travel programs as well as rates from hotel.info’s roster of independent hotels and small chains, making for wide choice.

And, in a second Concur deal, mutual clients of Concur and Hotel Reservation Service now will gain access through Concur Cliqbook Travel to 260,000 properties from HRS at no extra charge.

HRS, headquartered in Cologne, claims to be the largest online provider of non-GDS hotel inventory.

Concur says corporate clients can take advantage of HRS corporate discounts of up to 30% at some 18,000 partners hotels globally.

The integration, part of a release of several new features for Concur Travel & Expense, is designed to enable road warriors and corporations to enhance their management of mileage expenses. Among the tool’s new features:

• Users can select start, end and waypoints on a Google Map for each mileage expense.
• Commute distances can be subtracted from the mileage expense.
• Audit rules point to whether the mileage has been edited to exceed the amount calculated, and whether the commute distance has been deducted.
• Users can access a Most Recently Used list to retrieve stored locations.A per-car configuration can also be used.

Concur also rolled out a series of new airline-ancillary fee expense types, along with dashboards and reports to help corporations process the torrent of new optional services, from bag fees and upgrades to lounge access and onboard meals.

To ensure business travelers adhere to corporate travel policies, the new airline-ancillary fee reporting tool enables organizations to define their own audit rules.

Concur also introduced a Best Practices Dashboard, which measures current client configurations for Concur Travel & Expense against best practices in control & compliance, as well as mobility, the company says.

The Management Travel blog points to a research note byMcAdams Wright Ragen’s Sid Parakh, who argues that companies like Farelogix and KDS could be on Concur’s short list of acquisition targets.

Farelogix President and CEO Jim Davidson labels talk of a Concur acquisition of Farelogix “pure speculation.”

And, a KDS spokesman says the company won’t comment on market speculation.

Parakh envisions Concur making some small to medium-size acquisitions with the proceeds.

Zacks Investment Research has a neutral rating on Concur and states:

“We believe the market for corporate travel and expense management services is large and under-penetrated. The company intends to continue investing in the growth of its customer base and increasing its market penetration by significantly expanding its direct sales force, collaborating with and growing its strong partner network and expanding geographically.

“The company has already sold its products and services to the top 100 Fortune 500 companies. Its customers range from large global public companies with more than 200,000 employees to smaller, single-location private companies. Concur is adequately diversified with no single customer accounting for more than 10% of its total revenues in recent years.”