Certify has acquired NuTravel's corporate online booking
tool for an undisclosed amount, the expense management company confirmed.
NuTravel will continue to operate its Airline
Solutions business independently. The tech company builds and powers
business-to-business booking portals for airlines like JetBlue and Air Canada.
In July, Certify told BTN it had partnered with NuTravel
to provide a solution for midsize and large companies called Certify Enterprise
Travel, which remains fully functional. Certify's initial plan was to white-label
NuTravel's booking tool and integrate it with Certify's expense solution to populate
booking transactions into Certify. Ultimately, the expense management firm has
acquired NuTravel's booking tool, along with its 15 developers in Dallas and
Purchase, New York. "We announced the partnership [in July], but we weren't
prepared to announce the acquisition as we were still working through the
details," Certify CEO Bob Neveu told BTN.
Certify, which has about 2,500 customers, inherits NuTravel's
more than 50 travel management company partners and more than 100 corporate
clients, some of which Neveu said are "quite large." Certify will honor
those clients' relationships with other expense tools, Neveu said.
Neveu said large customers are looking for booking tools
that integrate seamlessly with their TMC partners to access negotiated rates. "That
was the gap Certify had by not owning [a booking tool] and not being able to
control the competitive direction of the product offering," he said. "We
had that through partnerships at best, but now we own and control that
functionality."
Few suppliers provide a truly integrated T&E solution. Concur
is the leader in the space. KDS provided an independent integrated T&E
solution before American Express Global Business Travel acquired
it a year ago. Deem did so, as well, but has decided to open
its application programming interface to expense firms so it can focus on booking.
Private
equity firm K1 Investment Management acquired
a majority stake in Certify in June for $125 million and merged it with
three other expense management firms, though all four maintain their own
brands. At the time, Certify positioned itself as an alternative to Concur, and
this booking tool acquisition positions it as a more viable competitor.