SAP Concur's new car rental booking tool, which is due for release by the end of 2022, will feature tools to help travellers make more sustainable transportation choices.
Concur Travel president Charlie Sultan confirmed the plan in a memo released on Monday (15 August), with the upgraded tool set to include search filters for hybrid and electric vehicles, as well as guidance on vehicle emissions to give travellers more control over the environmental footprint of their trips.
The addition of these sustainability capabilities comes after SAP Concur's recent Global Business Travel Survey of 3,850 travellers showed that 94 per cent were planning to take steps over the next year to reduce the environmental impact of their travel.
The tool will also drive “process efficiencies through improved error avoidance while adding new ways to explore car rental options across suppliers both on-airport and off-airport," added Sultan.
The new car rental booking tool is part of full re-platforming of Concur Travel. This has seen Concur hire more than 200 engineers and product managers for what Sultan called “one of the most significant development investments ever made in the history of SAP Concur”.
Concur launched a new rail platform last year, and the car rental tool will be followed by a hotel booking experience in early 2023 that Sultan said would include “an enhanced [user experience] with features including better imagery and upgraded filtering and sorting capabilities”.
The airline booking component will arrive by next summer's Global Business Travel Association Convention, and offer “a revamped user experience, enhanced content and a better ability for travellers to compare amenities across products”.
Sultan added that the re-platforming work goes beyond Concur’s booking tool.
“We are building the travel platform of the future, across all travel products and partners,” Sultan said. “It’s built from scratch using the latest in microservices technology, which allows Concur Travel to be even more scalable, reliable and flexible.
“It enables us to efficiently deploy innovative features, launch the SAP Concur suite of travel products into the next generation, and deliver a streamlined ecosystem and platform that will enable an integrated, end-to-end travel experience regardless of whether users are on desktop or mobile.”