Flight

In January 2017, the release note named Sabre - Remove Invalid Seat Selection, Finish Booking – United Airlines (UA) and/or American Airlines (AA) stated that if a user is assigned to a premium seat but does not qualify for a premium seat, the seat will be cancelled and the reservation (PNR) will be created without the seat assignment. The user will see a message on the itinerary: We were unable to confirm a seat assignment. Click on "Selected Seat" to view the seat map and manually select your seat.

Correction: Be aware that, starting in January 2017 as described above, the seat is cancelled and the reservation (PNR) is created without the seat assignment; however, there is no message on the itinerary.

Recently, SAP Concur has seen an influx of support cases indicating that the cancellation process for Cleartrip Direct Connect air bookings was not functioning properly. Upon closer review, SAP Concur has determined that Concur Travel does not support Cleartrip cancellations. Concur Travel is evaluating whether cancellations will be supported in the future. Please watch future release notes for updates, which will be provided as they become available.

Hotel

SAP Concur has upgraded its hotel connectivity technology to offer a new API service known as HotelService 2.0 or HS2. The new API is designed as a standard solution for all hotel suppliers connected to Concur Travel. Throughout the next months, we are planning to migrate all hotel direct connect partner APIs from the existing legacy APIs (HotelService 1.0, HRS and Hotel.de) to our new microservice-based HotelService API 2.0.

The first hotel supplier, HRS, has been fully migrated. For more information, refer to the HRS Direct Connect Travel Service Guide (English only).

On the Hotel Search tab, there is an Add Another Hotel check box that allows the user to automatically book a second hotel after booking the first one. This option is useful when booking multiple hotels in one trip. However, it is used infrequently (approximately once in three hundred hotel bookings) and it is incompatible with certain workflows, like when the user is directed to a third-party website to complete the booking. With this release, the Add Another Hotel check box will be removed.

With this release, we will rename the Hotel Chain filter to Property Brand on the hotel search results page. The new name more accurately describes the search results, which may contain other types of accommodations, not just hotels. An example would be an Airbnb for Work property.

Miscellaneous

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.

Targeted for the end of July, there will be new functionality added to Concur Open. Users can continue to access Concur Open and view Concur service availability; no functionality will be removed. However, with the release, SAP Concur users will be able to log in to Concur Open and:

• View service status for the services and the data centre that are specific to their company

• Access subscription options for updates about the incidents that affect the services specific to their company

• View service history for the past two years as well as detailed root cause analysis information and the actions taken by SAP Concur for specific incidents

The Processor Privacy Statement link is available in the SAP Concur footer. However, not all pages in SAP Concur display the footer. In this case, the user can return to the Home page and click the Processor Privacy Statement link there. Also with this release, the Processor Privacy Statement link is available in online Help.

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.

Concur delivered a new UI for branded fares in 2016 and further enhanced it 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 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.

Airbnb is the world's largest community marketplace with nearly 5,000,000 listings in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. Over 150,000 companies have signed up for Airbnb for Work to provide more accommodation choices for their employees. This integration enables companies to activate Airbnb content in Concur Travel. Employees will be able to search for accommodations that comply with their travel programmes – including entire homes.

We are targeting Airbnb for Work integration in the August 2018 release.

Marriott International acquired Starwood Hotels & Resorts in 2016. Recently, Marriott announced that, starting in August, the following loyalty programmes will be combined into one programme: Marriott Rewards, The Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG)

SAP Concur is coordinating with Marriott to accommodate any necessary updates in support of this change. More details will be shared as they are available; please monitor release notes for additional updates.

SAP Concur originally planned to provide Trenitalia rail content via SilverRail. As SAP Concur was nearing completion of its development work and preparing for certification, new Italian government regulations requiring additional personal data as a security requirement for certain passenger bookings created a significant technical obstacle between Trenitalia and SilverRail. SilverRail is not currently committed to this work.

Therefore, it appears that the SilverRail/Trenitalia relationship would likely not provide the corporate travel features that customers have come to expect from SAP Concur. As a result, SAP Concur is currently unable to move forward in offering Trenitalia content via SilverRail at this time. Accordingly, this release note is being removed. If the issues are resolved and if the corporate travel features meet our customers' expectations, SAP Concur will evaluate the possibility of utilising the SilverRail/Trenitalia partnership to provide this content.

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.

Concur Travel is currently re-evaluating this feature. For the time being, this item will be removed from the release notes. When this feature is closer to completion, it will appear in the release notes again.

Targeted for the end of 2018, 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.

SAP Concur announced the End of Support for plain text FTP to transfer data to and from SAP Concur.

Plain text FTP is not a secured protocol and has inherent security vulnerabilities. On 1 September, 2018, SAP Concur Operations will apply a security update to our File Transfer infrastructure, restricting the use of plain text FTP as a part of our ongoing commitment to securing our customers’ data and meeting the audited security requirements of the SAP Concur Trust Platform.

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