Ramp, the expense management company valued at $7.65 billion, is expanding into business travel through a new partnership with Booking Holdings’ Priceline. This move aims to attract and retain customers by simplifying the often cumbersome process of booking business travel and managing expenses.
The new offering, Ramp Travel, leverages AI and automation to streamline the booking process. Priceline will provide Ramp users with access to its extensive inventory of flights, hotels, and other travel services.
Ramp CEO Eric Glyman highlighted the growing demand for business travel management on their platform. “One in nearly every five dollars spent on Ramp cards is related to flights, hotels, and travel entertainment,” Glyman noted. This significant usage led to the collaboration with Priceline and the development of the new travel feature. Ramp now supports over 25,000 businesses.
Ramp, a two-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company, distinguishes itself in the expense management software market by not only tracking spending but also identifying savings opportunities through expense duplication alerts and contract negotiations. This strategy will be extended to their travel management services.
The partnership seeks to disrupt traditional corporate travel models, which often involve high fees and restrictive contracts with select suppliers. Priceline CEO Brett Keller criticized the conventional approach, stating, “The modern traveler is much smarter now and does most of the work themselves, so they deserve access to broader inventory and lower prices.”
In addition to travel, Ramp has introduced other features such as Ramp Intelligence, which provides finance teams with insights and savings suggestions, and Ramp Plus, a suite of services for enterprise clients. These additions are crucial for Ramp’s growth in the competitive spend management space, where it faces rivals like Brex, Navan, Expensify, Mesh Payments, Airbase, and SAP’s Concur.
Glyman believes these new offerings will attract a wider range of clients and deepen existing customer relationships. He noted that while most Ramp users have not raised venture capital, the average company size on the platform has more than doubled in the past three years. “It does not just deepen [Ramp] but it also opens us up to new clients that we can serve today that we couldn’t before,” Glyman said.
This partnership marks a significant step in transforming how businesses manage travel expenses, aiming to provide more flexibility, broader choices, and cost savings for modern travelers.