A number of leading hotel brands, such as Best Western, InterContinental, Marriott and Starwood, will participate in the Concur Open Booking corporate travel booking service in India.

Concur Open Booking allows business travels book hotels and other services, such as rental cars, outside the core Concur Travel service while still capturing and providing all travel transaction data to parent company Concur Travel & Expense for a complete itinerary.

Other travel firms using the service include Choice Hotels, La Quinta Inns  and car rental firms Avis and Hertz. 

Through Concur's T&E Cloud, the hotels will be able to link a traveler's profile with their respective loyalty accounts, enabling the supplier to grant relevant corporate discounts even when the booking occurs on the hotel website.

"Even the best run programs see a meaningful percentage of their hotel and car bookings happen outside of the corporate booking tool," said Michael Koetting, EVP of supplier management at Concur.

"All companies - whether they have managed or unmanaged travel programs - have some aspect of supplier direct bookings as a component of their travel program."