The Government of the Netherlands has appointed three preferred partners to manage its business travel spend.
Incumbent travel management company VCK Travel has been reappointed, while Atriis has been named its new preferred online booking tool – replacing Amadeus' Cytric platform – and Yokoy, which opened an office in Amsterdam earlier this year, takes over from MobileXpense as its expense system.
The contract is for an initial eight-year term with the option of a four-year extension and incorporates some 13 government departments.
It is collectively known as 3W Werken voor Nederland, WereldWijd which translates as Working for the Netherlands, Worldwide – and is worth around €36 million across 42,000 trips annually.
An RFI process commenced in March 2021 and was followed by a two-step RFP period that got underway in September last year.
All bookings will be processed via the Atriis booking platform, either directly by the traveller or booker, or offline via VCK Travel and the Atriis agent desktop tool.
Jos Drenkelford, 3W project leader for the Government of the Netherlands, said Atriis “stood out during the entire tender process” and “encouraged us to think outside of the box”.
The government’s head of Travelpoint 3W, Bas de Rijk, said a key driver was the platform’s “impressive agility and transformational ability, which will enable us to drive significant online adoption rates of [more than] 85 per cent within the first 12 months’ usage.”
He added: “It allows travellers to independently book, change, and cancel travel products and services, and feeds all required backline processes seamlessly, such as expense claims.”
Atriis said it will provide full access to airlines’ NDC content – including Air France-KLM, Lufthansa Group and British Airways – as well as a “frictionless process” for NDC post-sale changes, and will reduce leakage while enhancing the booking experience through its AI-based retravel.io technology.
“As the Dutch Government will use the Atriis traveller and agent collaborative platform alongside our latest innovation leap around traveller experience and off-channel booking prevention via retravel.io, it will have unique capabilities to control all users' bookings from all angles - policy sustainability, and travel suppliers, cross-devices, cross-points of purchase and across rich content sources,” said Atriis co-founder Omri Amsalem.
Yokoy co-founder and chief customer officer Lars Mangelsdorf said that as the company's end-to-end solution “not only maps compliance guidelines and internal company policies, but also ensures adherence to these sets of rules, our product offer met the government’s exact requirements.”