Following several months of speculation, American Express Global Business Travel and Concur have announced a ¡°strategic alliance¡± which includes the launch of a ¡°next-gen¡± end-to-end travel and expense platform ¡°with AI at its core¡±.

Called Complete, the co-developed technology brings together booking, servicing, payments and expensing in one platform, and delivers ¡°one app and one view across online and offline¡± for a consistent experience. Mutual customers of the companies will have access to Complete later this month and be migrated to the new platform in November, starting with companies in the US and UK.

The partnership between the two travel management giants will also see the exclusive integration of Concur Expense and Amex GBT¡¯s Egencia platform ¡°soon¡±, as well as future co-developed innovations in areas including content availability and display and travel manager capabilities, ¡°utilising AI to create a new booking experience, manage travel disruptions and provide programme insights¡±.

A statement issued by the companies said they will allocate funding and development resources to build joint innovations on behalf of mutual customers ¡°with the vision to redefine the corporate travel and expense experience.¡±

¡°We all know the industry is evolving rapidly,¡± said Charlie Sultan, president of Concur Travel, in a briefing with BTN. ¡°We can see continued vertical integration and more challenges of content fragmentation, and I think we¡¯re going to see in the near future that the criticality of robust, complete data is going to make unified solutions more and more valuable to customers, travellers and suppliers.¡±

Sultan said that the protracted roll-out of the new Concur Travel booking tool ¨C commonly referred to as T2 ¨C involved multiple TMCs and stakeholders and at times led to frustration among customers, and an alternative approach to driving industry change was required.

¡°The approach we¡¯ve taken for the last years is not going to be fit for the next ten years or so,¡± said Sultan. ¡°To move faster, we can¡¯t do that as one part of an ecosystem, we need to do that with a partner, and while we¡¯re going to continue to support and innovate on the new Concur Travel and the existing system of reseller and servicing TMCs, we¡¯re also changing the game to strengthen our position and offering to customers in combination with Amex GBT.¡±

Evan Konwiser, chief product and strategy officer at Amex GBT, said the TMC would continue to support Neo, its proprietary booking tool built from?its acquisition of KDS.

Bringing it all together

Konwiser also stressed the importance of bringing together multiple components of the travel management ecosystem in a single solution, and of doing it with a partner that many of its customers already work with.

¡°We are doing exactly what our customers have asked us to do which is to build a futureproof solution with the right UX that drives frictionless travel, that has data flowing in a way that drives the right experiences, and that powers the AI tools of today and tomorrow,¡± he told BTN.

Konwiser said that the companies¡¯ joint portfolio of customers is ¡°considerable¡± and that the TMC ¡°has a plan¡± for the migration of its newly acquired CWT customers but did not disclose further details.

Complete will be a streamlined solution with a single roadmap and integrated servicing model, the companies said, ¡°providing customers with accelerated innovation and programme optimisation¡±.

It will feature the integration of the Amex GBT marketplace and SAP Concur tech stack; deliver the ¡°next generation of modern retailing¡± and expedited releases of NDC content; and provide traveller support through an integrated chat agent. An AI-powered user experience and personalisation will provide enhanced traveller experiences, the companies added, although details available to BTN at the time of publication were limited.

Additional features and functionality will be announced later this year and rolled out in quarterly releases in 2026.

Sultan said that, unlike the roll-out of T2 when some features became available at different times, ¡°there is nothing that the Complete offering is going to be lacking relative to the new Concur Travel ¨C there is really not a reason for customers not to want to come along.¡±

Fred Fredericks, general manager and chief product officer at SAP Concur, added: ¡°We¡¯re not cannibalising our existing offering. We have added additional people to build out Complete and we¡¯ll continue to support Concur Travel and the existing ecosystem. There will still be innovation in T2.¡±

A public roadmap for Complete will be published in the next few weeks, said Fredericks, and although it is based on a quarterly cadence, releases will be more frequent. ¡°We are innovating at pace ¨C that¡¯s the philosophy here. Customers can opt-in to new functionality more or less constantly and the GBT team is aligned with that pace.¡±

Konwiser added that the companies¡¯ partnership ¡°empowers us to build new software together that deeply integrates our data, marketplace, and servicing capabilities across both travel and expense.¡±

The new Complete platform will be showcased at SAP Concur and Amex GBT events next week and at Business Travel Show America in New York on 15-16 October.