Concur, the travel management and expense toolset that was purchased about a year ago by SAP, announced that it is partnering with HotelTonight and Lyft to allow employees to easily expense the two services.
Used by over 20,000 businesses and 30 million employees, the platform is an easy way for employees to book and get reimbursed for travel and other expenses.
After linking your HotelTonight or Lyft account with the Concur portal (as easy as typing in your email address used for the apps), all future bookings for corporate travel will be imported into Concur and automatically filed into an expense report.
Tim MacDonald, executive vice president of Platform & Data Services for Concur, said that before this partnership most companies would consider it out of policy for employees to travel using Lyft and HotelTonight.
Even if some companies allowed it, employees would have to manually create an expense report, alert your company’s HR department where you were staying, and multiple other tedious tasks.
MacDonald also explained that although services like HT, Lyft, or Airbnb don’t fit into traditional travel programs, they add a bunch of value for both business travelers and their companies.
For example, a employee can now take unlimited Lyfts around the city for meetings, instead of paying hundreds of dollars an hour to have a black car stay with them all day.
Similarly, some travelers may not know if they need to stay overnight in a city until the day of travel. Booking same-day rooms with HotelTonight saves the company a potentially wasted hotel room, and also provides a lower rate.
With Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and HoteTonight all now available to 30 million employees via Concur, it is going to be interesting to see how many employees prefer these on-demand apps over traditional hotels and car services.
