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Ramp, an expense management company that was recently valued at $7.65 billion, is venturing into business travel through a deal with Booking Holdings Inc.’s Priceline as more corporate spending platforms look to retain and attract customers with add-on services. field.
The new product, called Ramp Travel, uses artificial intelligence and automation to help streamline the booking and expense processing of business travel, and Priceline provides Ramp users with access to airline, hotel and other travel inventory.
Ramp CEO Eric Glyman said business using cards and travel budgets has increased significantly on the platform, accounting for 20% of annual card spending, up from about 10% in 2021. Collaborate with Priceline and build new platform features.
“Nearly one-fifth of the money spent on ramp cards is related to flights, hotels and travel-related entertainment,” Gleiman said. “It’s an important way to sew everything together.”
Ramp said more than 25,000 businesses currently use its platform.
Ramp, a two-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company (No. 32 in 2024), differentiates itself from the growing number of expense management software vendors by not only tracking expenses but also helping companies save money by flagging recurring expenses. . fees, or negotiated through contract. Gleiman said the same controls would apply to travel.
These companies see an opportunity to get a piece of business travel products, which often rely on high fees to ensure control over where employees stay or which airlines travelers fly.
Priceline CEO Brett Keller describes business travel as an “ancient business model” in which large companies negotiate directly with a select group of suppliers, resulting in lower customer support and service due to subsequent use. Higher prices.
“Modern travelers are much smarter and do most of the work themselves, so they should have access to wider inventory and lower prices,” Keller said.
Travel is the latest feature added by Ramp last year, which also launched Ramp Intelligence (generating insights and proactively suggesting savings opportunities for finance teams) and Ramp Plus (a new suite of services for enterprise customers such as Shopify).
The spend management space has become crowded, with other disruptors Brex and Navan, as well as Expensify, Mesh Payments, Airbase and Center vying for market share with legacy players such as SAP’s Concur, making these additions to Ramp a disruptor to its growth and continued Crucial.
Gleiman said the push into travel and other new products should help expand its customer list. While most Ramp clients have never raised venture capital, the average size of companies using the platform has more than doubled in the past three years, he said.
“Not only does it deepen (Ramp), but it opens the door to new customers that we can serve today that we couldn’t provide before,” Gleiman said.
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