TripIt unveils travel tool for businesses

Travel startup TripIt continues to expand its service for business travelers (and the ways it makes money from those services) with tonight’s launch of a new package called TripIt for Business.

The San Francisco-based company aggregates all of a user’s travel information into a single itinerary, so they can find the information they need in one place. As you can guess from the name, the site’s new service adds features aimed at companies, in particular smaller organizations that don’t have their own travel program.

Cofounder and Vice President of Business Development, Scott Hintz, compared TripIt for Business to Salesforce.com, in that it offers smaller companies a simple, lightweight equivalent of the more complicated travel systems used by larger enterprises. Rather than managing all of a company’s travel through one system, TripIt for Business allows businesses to arrange their travel through whatever website, agency or provider they want, while still managing those plans on a single site.

There are two main components — memberships to TripIt Pro (the premium service that includes real-time flight data and alternate itineraries when flights are canceled or delayed) sold at a discounted rate, and a private company network where employees can share their itineraries. Hintz said more than 12,000 businesses are already using a free version of the group feature. TripIt For Business adds the ability to create groups within the larger company network, say for individual departments.

TripIt for Business pricing starts at $399 per year, a level that includes 10 TripIt Pro memberships.

TripIt has raised $13.1 million from Azure Capital Partners, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and others. Competitors include WorldMate.