2024 year in review

This past year included many major milestones for Spotnana as we grew our partner ecosystem and released several major enhancements to our Travel-as-a-Service platform.

Here is a summary of some of the major company wins and product improvements we announced in 2024.

Modernizing the infrastructure of travel

2024 represented another key year of Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service platform gaining adoption by major players across the global travel industry. A primary area of focus for Spotnana has been to expand the ecosystem of travel management companies (TMCs) that have deployed our travel platform: 

• In April, we announced a partnership with Direct Travel to power travel for their customers. Direct Travel began field-testing its Avenir platform this month and will start onboarding its first customers in the coming months. 
• In May, JTB Business Travel announced that it will use Spotnana to power global travel services for its customers. Sustainability-focused travel management system Goodwings also began using Spotnana’s platform to serve their global customers, with servicing provided by JTB Business Travel.
• In November, Solutions Travel, one of our first TMC partners, announced it materially grew its business and is now serving multinational customers across 27 countries with plans to expand further. 
• In December, Spotnana’s CEO Steve Singh published a blog post highlighting key milestones with these TMC partners along with an update that CWT has onboarded a number of large enterprise customers. 

For our TMC partners, we are working to deliver a number of key value propositions including an improved experience for travelers and corporations, access to comprehensive global content, reduced TMC operating costs, and a future-proof technology stack that keeps our partners at the forefront of innovation.

2024 was also a strong year for expanding our ecosystem of technology and travel provider channel partners:

• In May, Expensify launched its new travel offering powered by Spotnana, bringing modern travel booking capabilities to its expense management platform. 
• In July, we announced that meeting management platform Planned will use Spotnana to power its travel services.
• Also in July, Marriott launched Business Access by Marriott Bonvoy powered by Spotnana for small and medium-sized businesses. This innovative program provides SMBs with direct access to Marriott’s global portfolio of hotels through a modern booking interface along with the ability to book flights and car rentals. 

These partners joined our growing ecosystem of companies with travel offerings powered by Spotnana, which includes Brex, CWT, Qantas, and more. Our partners are essential to our strategy, and we look forward to working with everyone to bring new innovation to life through our Travel-as-a-Service platform.

Global content and NDC

Over the course of this year we expanded our connections to content sources in order to provide our customers and partners with the widest possible array of global content. In 2024 we added these content sources to the Spotnana platform:

• Expedia hotel content – This direct connection allows us to provide access to expanded inventory, better shopping experiences, self-service exchanges and cancellations, and improved servicing.
• Air France-KLM Group NDC – Our direct NDC connection enables travelers to access NDC-exclusive fares, continuous pricing, and loyalty-based seat selection, while avoiding surcharges.
• Emirates NDC – Through our direct connection, travelers have access to NDC-exclusive booking classes in Emirates’ economy and business cabins, promotions, and access to select ancillaries, including extra luggage, as well as the ability to avoid surcharges.
• Ryanair and easyJet – Travelers now have access to Ryanair’s Expanded Fare Bundles — from Basic to Flexi Plus — and all fares sold by easyJet including standard and FLEXI fares. These direct connections are made via our partnership with Kyte. 
• Copa Airlines NDC – Our direct NDC connection provides full content, access to exclusive sales and discounts, the ability to purchase ancillaries, and the avoidance of cost-recovery surcharges on bookings.
• Sabre NDC – We also expanded our partnership with Sabre by adding support for Sabre NDC content.

In addition to the integrations noted above, our R&D teams made enhancements to our platform this past year to make it easier for us to add more direct integrations to content sources in the future. 

Product innovations

Throughout 2024, we introduced numerous features to enhance the experience of using Spotnana for travelers and administrators, while also enhancing Spotnana’s powerful capabilities for travel agents and travel sellers.

Enhanced functionality released in 2024 includes:

For agents and TMCs

• In-house ticketing and QC engine – Building mid-office and unused ticket management capabilities in-house enables our TMC partners to enjoy greater operational efficiency and provide better experiences to travelers.
• Supplier management – We made it simple for TMC partners to enter and manage their content credentials on a self-service basis with a configurable rules engine.
• Agent companion view – Agents have access to a traveler’s profile, preferences, and travel history on demand as they perform servicing tasks throughout Spotnana’s travel platform.
• Language localization and local invoicing support – Spotnana’s Online Booking Tool supports multiple languages and allows for invoicing in numerous countries.

For travel managers

• Spotnana Events – We added capabilities for meeting and event planners to manage event travel, including simple event creation, advanced booking controls, traveler invitations and reminders, self-service booking and exchanges, support for guest travelers, and real-time event analytics.

• Flexible site messaging – Travel managers have the ability to schedule and publish messages for specific audiences in a variety of locations based on a wide range of traveler and trip criteria.
• Advanced lowest logical fare (LLF) capabilities – Administrators can create a dynamic policy for lowest logical fare rules, and travelers who attempt to book out of policy are presented with a list of recommended in-policy alternatives.
• Multi-passenger booking – We support simultaneous bookings of up to six people on the same flight, while allowing for self-service traveler changes.
• Supplier restriction and management – Our supplier management interface makes it easy for administrators to limit bookings for specific suppliers, types of suppliers, and countries.
• Negotiated savings report – With one click, administrators can see how much their travel program has saved using negotiated rates and fares.
• Sustainability integrations – We added integrations to Thrust Carbon and ATPCO for carbon emissions and implemented a framework that makes it easy for corporations to choose their preferred partner for carbon emission calculations.
• Other integrations – We added an integration with Crisis24 for duty of care and with Cirium for aviation analytics.

For travelers

• Flight vs. rail comparison for travelers – We can prompt travelers to consider rail options when booking a flight based on trip length and the availability of rail alternatives.

• Split payments for ancillaries – Travelers can use their own credit card to pay for ancillaries purchased on Spotnana that are outside of corporate policy, while other trip costs are paid through corporate payment methods.
• Split tickets for rail – European rail tickets made on Spotnana are automatically turned into split tickets, which save on rail costs for the same trip.

These features represent just a small fraction of the hundreds of new features we released this year to our partners and customers.  

An award-winning workplace

We are humbled to have been recognized by Fast Company as one of the Next Big Things in Tech 2024 and by the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence. It was also an honor to be named to the 2024 Business Travel News Europe Hotlist.

We were similarly delighted to be named a Forbes America’s Best Startup Employer and a BuiltIn Best Place to Work.

Internally, Spotnana launched Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to foster a diverse and inclusive workplace that drives innovation and creativity. The first ERGs introduced are tailored for women, parents/caregivers, the LGBTQIA+ community, and the neurodiverse community along with their allies.

We also unveiled our three new core values to our global employee base at Converge, our 2024 global offsite, which took place this year in Dubai. 

Interested in joining the Spotnana team? You can check out our Careers page here.