Grasp, Traxo Partner to Find ‘Invisible’ Business Travel Bookings

Two major players in the corporate travel data industry are joining forces. Grasp Technologies, which provides data management, consolidation, payment integration and data visualization, has formed a partnership with Traxo, which offers corporate travel data capture and pre-trip auditing.

“The partnership provides corporate travel managers worldwide with the ability to see the most complete data picture of their companies’ business travel, including all on- and off-platform bookings, within Grasp’s robust data and intelligence suite,” Grasp said in a news release emailed to PYMNTS on Monday (Oct. 4). “An industry leader for more than 25 years, Grasp serves more than 150,000 corporate travel departments in over 70 countries through its footprint.”

With Traxo, Grasp says it can — for the first time in two decades — give customers a simple way to view and incorporate so-called “invisible” bookings, a term referring to the roughly 40% of business travel bookings made outside of the corporate travel policy.

“The corporate travel industry needs a truly complete, accurate and timely data solution for tracking and consolidating all aspects of a travel program – a true end-to-end platform that delivers actionable, real results,” said Grasp Technologies’ Chief Sales Officer Dave Lukas.

He added that despite Grasp’s best efforts, “we were missing one piece – one of the most, if not the most important one – unmanaged booking data or travel leakage. Traxo has solved that problem.”

Under the agreement, Grasp will use Traxo’s technology to manage its own in-house business travel. It also becomes a Traxo Marketplace partner, which means it can automatically receive structured travel data from Traxo’s corporate clients.

Read more: New COVID Cases Ground Air Travel

The partnership lands at a challenging time for corporate travel. As PYMNTS reported last month, a rise in new COVID-19 cases had businesses rethinking fall employee travel. Airlines and hotels that were counting on corporate trips as a reliable source of revenue saw their hopes dim.

“I’d say it’s a pause, as compared to continued growth. That said, we understand why it’s paused,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said at the time.