TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
businesswire | March 23, 2023
Sonder Holdings Inc. a leading next-generation hospitality company that is redefining the guest experience through technology and design, has expanded its business travel segment to include group bookings. Sonder also announced a new partnership with HelmsBriscoe, the global leader in meetings procurement and site selection.
Having formally launched its business travel segment in 2021, Sonder continued to expand this area in 2022, including strengthening its position on GDS platforms, and adding a significant number of corporate travel accounts. This translated into approximately $70 million in booked corporate sales in 2022, roughly 5x growth compared to 2021. The company continues to grow both corporate travel and corporate housing accounts, and is now increasing its share of group bookings within popular verticals such as sports and entertainment, hosting elite athletes and sports teams, as well as film and television production crews. Sonder offers both hotel and apartment accommodations in over 40 markets worldwide, including entertainment hubs and cities that host international sporting events.
“Partnering with an industry leader like HelmsBriscoe unlocks growth in group travel, at a time when corporate travel is still recovering to pre-pandemic levels, and the landscape is evolving with trends such as the blending of business and leisure travel. Sonder accommodations offer short-stay and long-stay groups an elevated experience at a great value. We see exciting opportunities to scale within our existing verticals, including sports and entertainment, and to add others,” said Kristen Richter, Vice President of Global Sales at Sonder.
Sonder’s portfolio now includes properties with on-site amenities and high key counts suited to groups, such as Battery Park in NYC, Business Bay in Dubai, Cielo in Mexico City, Maisonneuve in Montreal, and The Witherspoon in Philadelphia. Sonder spaces provide fast wi-fi, and many offer a comfortable place to spread out and work remotely, with fully-equipped kitchens, living rooms, multiple bedrooms and en-suite laundry.
About Sonder
Sonder is revolutionizing hospitality through innovative, tech-enabled service and inspiring, thoughtfully designed accommodations combined into one seamless experience. Launched in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Sonder provides a variety of accommodation options from spacious rooms to fully-equipped suites and apartments found in over 40 markets spanning ten countries and three continents. The Sonder app gives guests full control over their stay. Complete with self-service features, simple check-in and 24/7 on-the-ground support, amenities and services at Sonder are just a tap away, making a world of better stays open to all.
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BUSINESS TRAVEL
prweb | May 31, 2023
The San Francisco Travel Association has launched its largest-ever global marketing and advertising campaign, “Always San Francisco,” to promote tourism to the city. The multi-million-dollar campaign targets leisure travelers and meeting planners in major domestic markets and key international markets. It is the destination marketing organization’s first campaign to include television advertising.
Celebrating the city’s bold, inviting, and playful ethos, the “Always San Francisco” campaign features iconic locations visitors already connect to San Francisco—the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Lombard Street—and ones that showcase the city’s vibrant neighborhoods and the diversity of visitor experiences. The campaign also includes cameos by San Franciscans, such as Lady Camden of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame, artist Sirron Norris, dancers from the acclaimed AXIS Dance Company, musicians Mae Powell and Michael O’Konis, Chinatown lion dancers, and chefs from Michelin-starred Angler, to represent the talent and inclusivity the city champions.
“This is the largest campaign San Francisco Travel has ever launched due to the incredible support from the City and County of San Francisco, Visit California, and other stakeholders,” said San Francisco Travel President and CEO Joe D’Alessandro. “Tourism is vital to the city’s economic recovery, and ‘Always San Francisco’ is designed to drive increased visitation by showing the authentic San Francisco experience people love and dream about.”
San Francisco Travel Chief Marketing Officer Lynn Bruni-Perkins said, “The campaign evokes the emotional joy visitors find here. San Francisco will always be San Francisco. It is ever-changing, but the feeling of San Francisco remains constant. Its epic beauty, iconic landmarks, diverse people, and larger-than-life moments stay with you forever.”
To match the powerful and inspiring imagery, San Francisco Travel collaborated with local and San Francisco-connected musicians to reimagine Judy Garland’s beloved rendition of the classic “San Francisco” song for its campaign video.
“We chose a soundtrack that matched the campaign’s energy and uplifting message and tapped into San Francisco’s legendary local music scene to reimagine the song,” said Bruni-Perkins. “The result is a beautiful artistic collaboration true to San Francisco’s spirit.”
Campaign assets will appear in high-impact media, such as linear TV (traditional TV), connected TV (CTV), and digital out-of-home (DOOH) in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Houston.
The campaign will also have a robust digital media layer through programmatic advertising, video ads, paid social media, OTA partnerships, and earned media. A consumer sweepstakes contest in the U.S. featuring five San Francisco experiences, including an “ultimate” package with exclusive access to attractions and activities, will launch in the coming months.
The domestic campaign runs from May 30 to Oct. 22. Internationally, “Always San Francisco” digital marketing campaigns will run in Australia, India, Asia Pacific, Europe, Canada, and Mexico.
The $6 million+ campaign is funded by a sub-grant from Visit California, a grant from San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, San Francisco Travel, and industry stakeholders.
San Francisco’s tourism industry has steadily recovered since the city’s reopening in 2021. This year, San Francisco Travel has forecasted 23.9 million visitor arrivals and visitor spending of $8.9 billion, an increase of $1 billion compared to 2022.
About SAN FRANCISCO TRAVEL
The San Francisco Travel Association is the official destination marketing organization for the City and County of San Francisco. The city is one of the top tourism and meetings destinations in the U.S. and received 21.9 million visitors in 2022. Total tourism spending in 2022 exceeded $7.7 billion. The tourism industry is the largest generator of outside revenue into San Francisco’s economy and supports over 53,000 jobs.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
prnewswire | March 27, 2023
Brex today announced Brex travel, a premium travel management experience that delivers comprehensive booking and management capabilities, all in the Brex dashboard and mobile app, with unbiased global inventory, self-service trip changes, and 24/7 agent support.
With the addition of travel, Brex is extending Empower to provide the first, all-in-one global system that integrates card, expense management and travel in one app. Brex has partnered with Spotnana, to build its travel capabilities from the ground up on top of Spotnana's modern, cloud-based Travel-as-a-Service platform. Empower was designed to address the needs of companies as they grow, from startups through enterprise-level companies.
With business travel picking up, modern companies need an effective solution to manage global travel end-to-end. Brex delivers an integrated experience providing employees with a self-serve solution to book and manage trips. Automated receipt capture and approvals drive higher compliance and real-time visibility for finance teams. Live budgets allow them to proactively provision and track spend in real time to keep everyone accountable, within policy and on budget.
Manage travel budgets in one place.
With Brex Empower's integrated card, spend and travel management system, finance teams can create budgets and policies to manage travel across the entire company. Brex travel enables finance teams to roll out customized travel budgets across an organization, enabling individuals and teams to book travel compliant with spend policies. When all trip expenses are managed in the same budget, there is real-time visibility into how spend is trending, giving leaders the ability to manage travel spend proactively, putting travel dollars to where they have the most impact.
Employee experience drives compliance.
Brex travel delivers a consumer-grade booking experience, with an unbiased global inventory that provides employees with the most comprehensive choices and gives companies access to preferred rates. This reduces the need to book travel outside of the system, increasing adoption and improving policy compliance. With automatic approval of expenses that are in policy, managers can focus only on the exceptions while employees book their flights, swipe their card at restaurants, and check out from the hotel. And, a modern UI and easy-to-use mobile app increases employee adoption, helping keep travel in policy and in budget.
"Most employees find it hard to comply because they don't know what the policy is, and it takes a lot of effort to collect receipts and memos for every purchase," said Henrique Dubugras, co-Founder and co-CEO of Brex. "With Brex travel, you can easily see the right policy on the mobile app at the time of booking, and we automate receipt collection, memos and approvals on trips."
"Our previous solution was clunky and slow. Brex's easy-to-use platform takes the hassle out of booking business travel with built-in controls to ensure total compliance. The difference has been night-and-day." – Jeff Cullinane, Vice President of Strategy, Integration, & PMO at Satellite Healthcare
A global travel platform.
As a truly global solution, employees can book travel to anywhere in the world and access 24/7 customer support wherever they are. Brex's travel inventory is unbiased and not impacted by commissions, a common practice in the business travel industry. Brex travel increases trust and adoption by providing the most comprehensive inventory and range of choices to a business traveler — including global distribution system (GDS) fares, direct API integrations with airlines, basic economy seats, local and low-cost airlines (often left out of most travel systems), as well as hotels and car rentals in all major countries.
"Brex is an innovator that shares our passion for delivering superior customer experiences," said Sarosh Waghmar, Founder and CEO of Spotnana. "We are excited to partner with Brex and provide the core travel infrastructure that enables them to expand the Empower platform and create an end-to-end travel and expense solution."
Brex travel builds on the momentum of the Empower platform. Since launching in 2022, Empower has experienced rapid growth, onboarding hundreds of thousands of employees globally and adding hundreds of new capabilities and integrations. Empower is supported in more than 100 countries and used by companies like DoorDash, Coinbase, Indeed, Superhuman, SeatGeek, Built Technologies, and Scale AI to manage their global spend on one platform. Travel customers on Empower include GoGuardian, Miso Robotics, FMX, Satellite Healthcare, and more.
About Brex
Brex is the first fully unified global spend platform — with corporate cards, expense management, reimbursements, bill pay, and travel, all in one place. Brex makes it easy for finance teams and founders to manage every aspect of global spend at scale by empowering their employees anywhere to make better financial decisions. Brex proudly serves tens of thousands of businesses, from enterprises to startups.
About Spotnana
Spotnana powers unparalleled global travel experiences. We are modernizing the infrastructure of the travel industry in order to bring freedom, simplicity, and trust to travelers everywhere. Our Travel-as-a-Service Platform makes travel simpler and more affordable for corporations, while enabling our ecosystem of agency, supplier, and technology provider partners to increase operational efficiency, unlock new revenue sources, and accelerate innovation.
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