SINGAPORE, 17 August 2020: Flight Centre Travel Group announced at the weekend the acquisition of San Francisco-based WhereTo, an enterprise travel platform and technology company that simplifies and improves business travel planning for corporations.
WhereTo pulls in content from dozens of sources and uses artificial intelligence-based algorithms to quickly guide users to the optimal trip options within a policy, factoring in criteria like traffic conditions, travel deals, and personal preferences.
This acquisition follows on the heels of several other technology-based businesses that FCTG has acquired or invested since the beginning of the year, including TPConnects and Shep Travel. FCTG plans to integrate the WhereTo offering into products and services offered across both its FCM Travel Solutions and Corporate Traveller brands globally.
“As a leading travel management company, FCM is committed to helping our customers adapt and stay ahead with data-enabled, traveller-centric technology solutions that would allow them to emerge from the crisis stronger than before,” said FCM Travel Solutions Managing Director Asia, Bertrand Saillet.
Over the past several years, FCTG has put a great deal of emphasis and resources to build a dynamic and robust system that can easily work in tandem with a variety of technologies and platforms utilised by airline partners. The partnership with WhereTo is a critical step in building a customer experience from the ground up that can handle an increasingly complex distribution environment.
“We look forward to leveraging the WhereTo technology within our existing products to help expose the complex duty of care requirements we’ll be facing as global travel restrictions are lifted, in line with the ‘design & control’ of user experiences which underpin the strategies of the FCM Travel Solutions and Corporate Traveller brands,”
said FCTG Chief Experience Officer John Morhous.
