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Watch out, Cape Canaveral. NASA might as well move to Chicago, because a major rocket launch is taking place in the city.
Rocketmiles for Business, a new B2B venture from the team behind Rocketmiles, launched this month, allowing businesses to get in on the perks the company offers to consumers. Rocketmiles was bought earlier this year by Priceline and allows customers to find and book great hotels at good prices, all the while earning travel miles with a preferred loyalty program.
With Rocketmiles for Business, companies can manage travel accounts and provide their frequently traveling employees with a well-deserved perk in the form of mileage for personal use. Rocketmiles offers a wide selection of hotels to choose from and full-service concierge—for free and without a contract.
“Most startups don’t want to overload their staff with bureaucratic, complicated business travel tools,” said Rocketmiles CEO Jay Hoffmann. “Instead, Rocketmiles for Business has the simplicity of a B2C product with a setup process that takes less than 5 minutes. On average, CFOs save $10K, hard-working staff earn 50K extra miles to help with their well-deserved quick vacation to Kauai after securing the Series B.”
The free service does more than help growing startups keep their hotel expenses at bay. Booking through Rocketmiles for Business also provides employees with thousands of miles of airline points, which are redeemable at the employee's personal discretion.
“Figuring out a comfortable place to stay on a business trip that is within a startup’s budget is stressful. Rocketmiles for Business simplifies the hours of searching,” said Rocketmiles for Business GM Shruti Challa, who added that on average, companies are saving anywhere from 10-15 percent on hotel spending.
For many startup employees who have chosen to forgo the luxury of a hefty paycheck in favor of pursuing their dreams, those airline points mean they can finally schedule a well-deserved vacation outside of work.
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A flight from B2C to B2B
Rocketmiles launched about two and a half years ago when the company identified an opportunity to connect airline loyalty with hotel booking. Soon after, they realized that many of their most laudatory initial customers were either unmanaged business travelers or business travelers booking hotels independently of their company’s travel policy.
That leakage did not go unnoticed for long.
The team began exploring how to transform their direct booking platform into something compatible and complementary for potential SMB and enterprise clients.
“If you think about other OTAs—they’re all going after leisure travel,” Challa said. “And leisure travel is big, but business travel is bigger.”
Rocketmiles is the latest company participating in a smaller trend of consumer brands that develop B2B offerings.
Developed with Chicago in mind
Challa said Rocketmiles for Business was specifically developed with the Chicago startup scene in mind.
“We’re really excited to introduce this product finally to the broader chicago startup scene, because we’ve seen some great success with some of the coolest and high-growth startups who know and love Rocketmiles,” Challa said. “That enthusiasm really inspired what the project was. We really built it with Bucketfeet in mind. We built it with Avant in mind. We built it with the Chicago startup community in mind.”
The company, which currently operates as an independent subsidiary of Priceline, says it’s still a startup at heart and is excited to help other tech startups out.
Those feelings, it seems, are mutual.
"Rocketmiles for Business is a way of life for us,” said Kate Kleyn, Bucketfeet’s head of human resources. “There is no easier way to keep within budget when booking hotels—plus, their customer service might just be the greatest of all time. And it's super nice that our team can rack up their own miles on any airline they choose when they book!"
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