Flight

Concur delivered a new UI for branded fares in 2016 and further enhanced in 2017, both in UI and with expanded branded fares coverage. With a future release, we will introduce our new branded fare data store to populate all branded fare information.

In addition, we will provide more brand detail in the Fare Details (now named Benefits/Services) section, such as: Wi-Fi availability, Food and drink, Seat type, Changes, Standby, Mileage and Priority.

Sabre will decommission the Basic Fare Shop JR. API, including the service action code OTA_AirLowFareSearchLLSRQ, including all versions. The JR. API has been in maintenance mode by Sabre for many years but will no longer be maintained. In conjunction with this change, Concur Travel will remove all references and functionality specific to JR. shopping.

All customers are strongly encouraged to ensure the Sabre pseudo city codes (PCCs) that they use are configured to use Sabre's Bargain Finder Max in advance of this change. Please contact your Sabre representative if you have questions about your PCC settings/configuration within Sabre. PCCs remaining on JR. shopping after the service is decommissioned will not function within Concur Travel.

WestJet Airlines (WS) is changing their cabin/class structure and realigning RBDs for their brands. The RBDs are unique to the WestJet brands and will be viable for flex faring. WestJet will also add a multi-cabin configuration including Premium Economy and Business Class cabins.

This fare structure will come into effect on 15 September 2018 and will affect flights with departure dates starting 20 September 2018.

Note the following:

• Flex faring shopping: Due to the difference in effective and affected dates, and because Concur adjustments will become effective immediately, Concur Travel will implement the new structure on the evening of 17 September 2018 (U.S. PDT).

• Non-flex faring shopping: This update will not affect the timing of implementation since shopping is done through the GDS normal low-fare shopping web services.

• Business Class: The Business Class product will be released at a later date.

Pay As You Fly (PAF) is a premium product for Lufthansa corporate travellers. The Pay As You Fly product offers benefits that go far beyond the journey itself, based on the concept of “book, fly and pay.” With the PAF programme, bookings are made as usual via the travel agency or Concur Travel. Tickets for all confirmed segments are issued by Lufthansa, 24 hours before departure. Check-in and boarding follow Lufthansa standard procedures. Payment processing is triggered after the traveller has checked in at the airport.

PAF is available on all Lufthansa German domestic and European flights, based on one-way and point-to-point connections.

Issues were noted in the August release notes. SAP Concur has resolved these issues and encourages customers to now test and use this feature.

Web Fares

Concur Travel is introducing the cancellation feature for Travelfusion air bookings.

With the Travelfusion cancel function, users will be able to cancel and refund Travelfusion bookings directly in Concur Travel if the airline supports online cancellations via Travelfusion and if the fare is refundable.

Until now, Concur Travel users had the option to purchase EarlyBird Check-In via Southwest Direct Connect – while booking a flight – for the fixed price of $15 one-way. As of 29 August, Southwest changed to dynamic pricing so they now offer EarlyBird Check-In at prices ranging from $15 - $25 one-way.

To ensure that the actual price for EarlyBird Check-In is always shown before purchase, Concur Travel made a short-term change to the EarlyBird Check-In purchase process. Effective immediately, Concur Travel will no longer offer the option to book EarlyBird from the itinerary immediately after the booking has been completed. In order to access the exact pricing, the itinerary has to be refreshed, so after booking, users navigate to the Travel home page, open the desired Southwest itinerary and purchase EarlyBird there. The exact price will be shown on the itinerary.

We are investigating the options to enhance the process in the future and show the dynamic price for EarlyBird Check-In before the booking has been completed.

Concur Travel is introducing an improved user experience for frequent flyer card handling for Travelfusion air bookings. Until now, the frequent flyer card number was not transferred from the user profile, the user had to add their frequent flyer card number to the flight option popup manually.

With this release, the option to enter the frequent flyer card number into the flight option popup will be removed. Instead, the frequent flyer card number from the user profile, which is automatically pre-populated on the Review and Reserve page, will be sent to the airline via Travelfusion.

User / Customer Benefit: This enhancement provides the same handling of frequent flyer card numbers for GDS and non-GDS carriers via Travelfusion.

Car

SAP Concur is pleased to announce support of NextCar (NC). NextCar offers rental car service primarily in the state of Maryland, with additional locations in Florida, Massachusetts and the Caribbean.

SAP Concur continues to work with NextCar as they solidify their content in the GDS. Be aware that there will be some options that are not yet available. For example, compact cars may appear, but mid-size may not. Know that SAP Concur is aware of the issue so opening a case with Concur Customer Support is not necessary.

Hotel

With this release, SAP Concur will support Four Points (FP) as an individual brand, which is now being separated from the Sheraton (SI) brand. Marriot is updating GDSs with the new code for Four Points (FP) hotels. The changes are expected to begin in the coming weeks.

While the changes are propagating, availability for Four Points properties may display as sold out. If in doubt, please have travellers contact their agencies, who should be able to perform the booking in the unlikely event that SAP Concur is having issues with Four Points inventory.

With this release, the Auto-check Find a Hotel for Air Searches setting is available for use. When set to True, the Find a Hotel check box on the Flight Search (or Mixed Flight/Train Search) tab of the Travel Wizard will be selected automatically. This saves a step for the user when booking, but the user can clear the check box if desired.

Beginning in 2016, Hilton Hotel & Resorts discontinued providing e-receipts for Concur Travel users.

As of now, Hilton Hotels & Resorts are again participating in the Concur Travel e-receipts programme.

Train

To support Amtrak Direct Connect functionality, SAP Concur can now extract the ticket number from the direct connect XML provided by Amtrak, store that ticket number and reference it with a data point.

This ensures the ticket number can be used in other Concur Travel processes. For example, the data point can now be referenced in the passenger name record (PNR) finishing template so that a standardised remark can be added to Amtrak PNRs for visibility at the travel management centre (TMC).

Miscellaneous

SAP Concur announced the End of Support for plain text FTP to transfer data to and from SAP Concur in November 2017. SAP Concur provided clients an extension until 1 September 2018 to complete their transition to secure FTP protocols.

Concur Open is the SAP Concur service status dashboard, which displays known and widespread outages and incidents for select SAP Concur services and all data centres. Concur Open displays the current service status as well as incident history for the past 20 days.

Personalised Concur Open became available on 11 September.

Planned Innovations/Changes

The items in this section are targeted for future releases. Concur reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here.

SAP Concur is happy to announce that Express Checkout is coming soon!

Express Checkout is a new checkout experience that will reduce the checkout process from five pages to two: Review and Book and Confirmed. Travellers will no longer have to page through multiple screens to complete their Air booking. All the pertinent information required to complete the booking will be collected via the new Review and Book page.

Currently, individual or ghost cards are supported for SilverRail bookings, with SilverRail being the merchant of record. In order to provide the option for the TMC to be the merchant of record, Concur will implement the "On Account" payment feature within Concur Travel. It allows TMCs to extend credit agreements with customers that enjoy this arrangement with other modes of transport.

Concur Travel is targeting the release of this feature in September or October 2018.

Update: Targeted for March of 2019, XML Profile Sync will no longer be available. SAP Concur recommends that all customers using XML Profile Sync move to Travel Profile API 2.0 at their earliest convenience. Version 2.0 functionality has been in production since May 2015 and affords better security and data validation that will support TMCs in meeting the needs of their travellers. If TMCs need assistance in identifying their customers who are still using XML Profile Sync, SAP Concur will assist with the identification of those customers.

SAP Concur evaluated all reports that are available from within Concur Travel. The goal of the evaluation was to balance the need to meet strict data security requirements, customer usage of these reports, the availability of travel data elsewhere and the resources required to maintain the reports.

SAP Concur has identified Travel Reports that will be retired, with a planned retirement date in October 2018. Refer to the release notes for additional information and a complete list of reports.

In a future release, we will update the SAP Concur Travel wait pages to our new theme. In that update, we will lighten our branding to accommodate all customer requirements and to alleviate confusion between SAP Concur and the TMC that will fulfil the traveller bookings.

Client Notifications

The list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur list of Subprocessors (English Only)

Monthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Professional Edition