New Uber for Business partnership with Flight Centre sees ground travel bookings integrated into expense management, finance and duty-of-care systems

19 September, 2019

It is now five years since Uber for Business was born and the platform is now an increasingly common part of the corporate traveller experience. In fact around 65,000 business travellers across the world are now users of its ground transport services.

A new partnership with Flight Centre Travel Group will now offer an "enhanced ground travel experience for corporate travellers" in Australia with Uber for Business bookings becoming fully integrated into expense management, finance and duty-of-care systems.

The integration with Flight Centre Travel Group will make it easier for businesses to have transparency and control over their employees' ground transportation spend. Travellers will see no change to their own user experience on the Uber app, but benefit from the enhanced back-end travel reporting.

"Australian business travellers love the magic and simplicity of Uber. Our partnership with the Flight Centre Travel Group brings that experience directly to their customers, with analytics and policy controls to complement our unique user experience," explains Ronnie Gurion, global head of Uber for Business.

Uber for Business already helps finance, administration and travel managers within corporate and government to better manage their employee and customer travel on Uber.

James Kavanagh, executive general manager of Flight Centre's corporate division, says the partnership will give corporates more visibility of traveller spend and activity, and also support clients with their compliance and duty of care obligations.

"Through the process of consulting with our customers, we sought to understand their pain points when it came to ground transport. By keeping our customers at the centre of our innovation and understanding what they needed, we were able to partner with Uber to create a solution that provides real tangible benefits," he explains.

The inclusion of the Uber for Business platform in its systems will make it easy for individual travellers, travel bookers, and finance and procurement teams to manage their travel; as details will appear in itineraries and invoices just like airfares, hotels or car rates would do. "We know that when it comes to corporate travel programmes, companies like to have everything in one place for ease of use, more visibility for reporting and travel risk management," adds Mr Kavanagh.

As highlighted, this partnership came about after a series of qualitative research sessions that Flight Centre's corporate brands have held with clients on the topic of ride sharing services, as well as a survey that was undertaken by the company on the shared economy.

The key results from the survey indicated that 84% use some form of ride sharing for car transport; 86% had used Uber as a form of ride sharing car transport for work or personal; 83% believe ride sharing services are appropriate and safe for work travel; and 86% believe that Uber is a mainstream service.