Flight

Apollo/Galileo - British Airways Hand Baggage Only (HBO) Fares

British Airways offers less expensive “hand baggage only” fares on many routes where they operate. Concur announced support for these fares for our Apollo/Galileo customers with our January release, with a note advising the feature would be available shortly after the release. Due to some unforeseen issues, the feature is just now available.

Business Purpose: These fares are less expensive than fares that include checked baggage; business travellers who need to make a day trip for business purposes can take advantage of these reduced fares, driving savings back to their companies.

British Airways Hand Baggage Only Fares - Feature Update

As noted previously, Concur has recently delivered support for British Airways’ Hand Baggage Only fares for our Apollo/Galileo customers. While extending the original Sabre feature to work for Apollo/Galileo customers, Concur discovered several sub-features that required updates to match British Airways’ current fares offering. For information on those changes, please refer to the release notes.

Apollo/Galileo - Branded Fares Support

Concur announced branded support for select airlines for our Apollo/Galileo customers with our January release, with a note advising the feature would be available shortly after the release. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the feature is available on 18 February.

Concur is pleased to announce support for branded fares for our Apollo and Galileo customers for a specific group of airlines: Binter Canarias (NT), Cathay Pacific (CX), Delta Air Lines (DL), Eurowings (EW), Germanwings (4U), Singapore Airlines (SQ), Virgin America (VX), Vueling Airlines (VY) and United Airlines (UA) - (United’s fares may not be available immediately, but Concur Travel should automatically start displaying them as soon as they are made available in Apollo or Galileo.)

Web Fares

Air Canada Direct Connect – Handling of Invalid Aeroplan Numbers

Until now, Air Canada sent an error in the background – which was not visible to the user – if an invalid Aeroplan number stored in the profile was then sent to Air Canada. In this case, no search results from Air Canada Direct Connect were displayed. This has caused confusion for the user. With the February 2017 release, search results from Air Canada Direct Connect are shown even if the Aeroplan number is invalid. The user can search and book but the invalid Aeroplan number will be ignored by Air Canada. Business Purpose: This change creates a better user experience when booking Air Canada Direct Connect.

Car

Hide Emerald Club Temporarily

In the December release, Concur created a relationship between Emerald Club, National and Enterprise in the Concur system. We recently discovered that the downstream systems (like GDSs) cannot properly intake the Emerald Club discounts and loyalty information, which is creating shopping and booking issues.

Concur will still maintain the relationship between Emerald Club, National and Enterprise but – for now – Concur will not allow customers to input numbers. Once the downstream systems fully support Emerald Club, Concur will again allow customers to add discounts and loyalty information.

Business Purpose: This change will help customers avoid booking issues when using Emerald Club loyalty information until the issue is fully resolved.

Train

**COMING SOON** Renfe and Swedish Rail Available via Concur Travel

Concur Travel currently provides rail content for US, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Concur will add content for Spain (Renfe) and Sweden to the portfolio of Concur Travel rail carriers. We are targeting the end of the first calendar quarter of 2017 to have the content available.

Business Purpose: Travellers can book rail content for Spain and Sweden in Concur Travel – a single, intuitive, web-based interface with effortless user experience.

Meetings

**COMING January 2018** Concur Meeting Discontinued as of 1 January 2018

Miscellaneous

Issue Fix – PNRs Placed on Galileo Offline Approval Queues Removed from Queue but Not Associated with User

With this release, Concur has resolved an issue that caused Galileo PNRs to not be properly imported from the Offline Approval Queue specified in an Agency Configuration. No TMC action is required.

CIBT – Add The Netherlands (NL), Singapore (SG), Brazil (BR), Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Spain (ES) and Mexico (MX)

In addition to the United States (US), Canada (CA), United Kingdom (UK), Germany (DE), France (FR), Australia (AU) and Switzerland (CH) – CIBT now supports Visa and Passport handling via the Concur Travel integration for: The Netherlands (NL), Singapore (SG), Brazil (BR), Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Spain (ES) and Mexico (MX).

Microsoft Office 365 Calendar Integration

Concur is happy to announce support for Microsoft’s Office 365 Calendar integration. If a customer enables Calendar Integration, Concur Travel auto-populates the user’s calendar with appointments based on their itinerary.

**REMINDER** Change in the Monthly Release Schedule

As shown on the 2017 release calendar, starting in March, Travel releases will occur on Saturday instead of Thursday. So, instead of seeing release-related changes on Friday of release week, they will appear to users on Monday (or over the weekend, if users sign in to Concur).

TripLink: Rail Supplier E-Receipts

Concur Travel currently generates air e-receipts for enabled TripLink air suppliers for use within Concur Expense. In this release, we are supporting generating rail receipts for enabled TripLink rail suppliers. Both air and rail TripLink receipts are enabled based on the existing receipt settings within the Concur Travel configuration.

Business Purpose: E-Receipts for TripLink rail suppliers help accomplish the effortless expense claim by removing the need for the user to attach a receipt image.

**COMING SOON** Support for TLS v 1.0 Encryption Protocol to End March of 2017

Concur announces an End of Support cycle for version 1.0 of the TLS encryption protocol, continuing support for the more secure 1.1 and 1.2 versions of TLS. As background, the TLS protocol allows secure back and forth communications between a phone or computer and a cloud-based service.

**COMING August 2017** New Payment Option in Concur Travel: Virtual Payment

In 2017, Concur Travel will be partnering with Conferma, a technology provider that works with banks and travel suppliers, to issue virtual cards for use with their network of travel suppliers across 184 countries.

The first phase of the integration will apply to GDS hotels. Additional travel services (flight, train, etc.) will follow soon after.

Update: TMCs will have one month’s early access, beginning in July. The feature will become available for everyone with the August release.

Business Purpose: Concur Travel will generate a one-time credit card number for a specified amount (including a CVV number, if necessary) and will pass that card number to the hotel supplier. In addition, the hotel will be faxed with the card information, thus securing a direct bill for that hotel reservation.