Travel management company BCD Travel is expanding its offerings for corporate travel managers and startups with a new product platform, SolutionSource.
The marketplace will integrate third-party technologies with BCD Travel’s proprietary platforms, creating an “open ecosystem” to streamline the travel management experience, says BCD Travel senior vice president of product planning and development Yannis Karmis.
“It’s a tremendous time for innovation in travel,” he says. “By building an open platform, SolutionSource opens the door to emerging technologies for our clients.”
The platform occupies a similar space in the market as products such as Travelport Marketplace and Sabre Red App Centre, designed to offer benefits to agents and managers - the ability to shop and select tools that ideally save time and generate revenue - as well as to startups that want to leverage their product.
SolutionSource is launching with four initial technology partners - Freebird, Rocketrip, FairFly and Yapta - which will address needs in risk management, price assurance, flight disruption, program optimization and more.
Additional partners will be added throughout the year.
“We’re excited that BCD is launching SolutionSource to provide corporate travel buyers with a marketplace where they can easily identify the products and services that will add unique value to their programs,” says Dan Ruch, Rocketrip founder and CEO.
For technology partners, SolutionSource gives access to BCD’s global client base to develop their reach. “To enable these partners, we recognize the need to expose the right technology in a way that’s easily consumable and scalable. We’ll continue to develop standard APIs and developer tools to support our SolutionSource strategy, says Irina Matz, BCD’s director of product planning.
SolutionSource is BCD’s third product platform alongside traveler engagement marketplace TripSource and data platform DecisionSource.