Mondee Acquires Rocketrip To Expand Travel Spending Incentives

Travel tech company Mondee has acquired New York City-based startup Rocketrip to expand travel spending incentives, according to a report from Skift.

The report noted that, for many businesses, travel spending can become a headache when employees end up spending too much on their corporate cards while out on the road.

Rocketrip’s premise is to offer benefits to employees who consciously restrain themselves on corporate spending, Skift reported. Companies like iHeartMedia, Twitter, Feld Entertainment and others are currently using it.

Mondee uses a tech platform called TripPro, which companies use for various operations. It also owns TripPlanet on its corporate side, which works with smaller businesses, providing them a toolkit to book travel without the aid of agencies. Rocketrip’s behavioral reward system will be a part of that offering, Skift reported.

With the acquisition by Mondee, Rocketrip can access the former company’s wide global base of around 45,000 enterprise customers, including agents for leisure and corporate travel. Many of those customers are ethnic travel agencies, providing around a third of Mondee’s revenue. Rocketrip, as it plans to expand outside the U.S., could find that useful, the report noted.

Rocketrip currently partners with SAP’s Concur, Sabre’s GetThere, and expense management services like Expensify. The company has offered its services to travel management companies, including Direct Travel and Omega World Travel, which works with U.S. government contractors.

Business travel could be one casualty of the pandemic, according to a PYMNTS report. As companies try to find ways to do business safely in the absence of a virus vaccine, business travel may decrease, according to Delta CEO Ed Bastian. Constrained company budgets won’t help in that regard.

But some benefits of business travel, such as face-to-face meetings, will keep operations alive in the future in some form.