Ramp, the expense management company recently valued at $7.65 billion, is expanding into business travel through a partnership with Booking Holdings’ Priceline, as an increasing number of corporate spend platforms seek to retain and attract customers by offering additional services.
Ramp Travel is a new product that uses AI and automation to help streamline and simplify the process of booking and paying for business travel. Priceline provides Ramp users with access to airline, hotel, and other travel inventory.
Ramp CEO Eric Glyman stated that the platform has seen a significant increase in businesses using cards and budgeting for travel, with 20% of annual card spend, up from roughly 10% in 2021. That eventually led Ramp to the Priceline partnership and a new platform feature.
“One in nearly every 5 dollars spent on Ramp cards is related to flights, hotels, entertainment related to travel,” said Glyman. “This is a substantial way to just stitch it all together.”
Ramp said its platform is now used by over 25,000 businesses.
Ramp, a two-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company (ranked No. 32 in 2024), has attempted to differentiate itself from the growing number of expense management software vendors by not only tracking spending, but also assisting businesses in saving money by flagging duplicated expenses or negotiating contracts. Glyman stated that the same approach to controls will be used for travel.
Companies see an opportunity to gain a share of corporate travel offerings, which frequently rely on high fees to ensure control over where employees stay or which carriers travelers fly with.
Priceline CEO Brett Keller described corporate travel as a “archaic business model” in which larger companies negotiate contracts directly with a select group of suppliers, resulting in higher rates due to the customer support and service provided.
“The modern traveler is much smarter than that now, and they do most of the work themselves, so as a result, they should deserve access to much broader inventory and lower prices,” Keller stated.
Ramp has added Travel as the latest feature in the last year, along with Ramp Intelligence, which generates insights for finance teams and proactively suggests savings opportunities, and Ramp Plus, a new suite of services for enterprise clients like Shopify.
The spend management space has become crowded, with fellow disruptors Brex and Navan, as well as Expensify, Mesh Payments, Airbase, and Center vying for market share alongside traditional players such as SAP’s Concur, making Ramp’s new additions critical to its growth and continued disruption.
Glyman stated that the expansion into travel and other new offerings will help the company grow its client base. While the majority of Ramp customers have never raised venture capital, the average size of companies using the platform has more than doubled over the last three years, he claims.
“It does not just deepen [Ramp] but it also opens us up to new clients that we can serve today that we couldn’t before,” said Glyman.
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