Your corporate travel program needs an open travel platform

Traditional travel technology is defined by closed systems that are cobbled together to provide dated experiences to users.

If you’re building a travel program, your choice of partners are usually constrained by which travel management company (TMC) you select. This determines which online booking tools (OBTs) you can use and which integrations work for HRIS, duty of care, or expense providers.

Here are four reasons why choosing an open travel platform can improve your travel program and provide better experiences to your travelers.

Access to best and cheapest content

If your travel platform is closed off and relies mainly on a GDS for content, you may not have access to the best content at the most affordable prices.

Many travel platforms lack the ability to bring in and properly display NDC-based fares, relying instead on EDIFACT-based content from a GDS. This closed approach means it’s harder to find the best fares and widest availability, since your travelers are limited to one content source.

Spotnana’s platform ensures your travelers have access to the widest possible array of travel content available. For example, our industry-leading NDC connections bring travelers the best air content from around the world at the lowest possible prices.

Our deep direct NDC integration with American Airlines allows access to products available through American’s NDC and direct channels including elevated offers such as Main Plus and Flagship® Business Plus™. Travelers can also purchase amenities in advance, make self-service changes and cancellations using Spotnana, and sign up for AAdvantage membership with one-click.

Travelers booking with United Airlines receive continuous pricing from the airline, ensuring they have access to a wider range of fares at the best available prices. They can also purchase amenities, receive loyalty upgrades based on their status, and receive post-ticketing assistance from Spotnana or United with all parties staying in sync.

Spotnana is the first Travel-as-a-Service platform to provide access to Lufthansa Group’s Green Fares, which allow travelers to select flights that use sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) to reduce the carbon impact of travelers. Travelers also receive access to continuous pricing and loyalty amenities for Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS, Air Dolomiti, and Discover flights.

We also have a direct connection with Southwest Airlines which provides full access to Southwest’s content and the best possible pricing with features including EarlyBird Check-in and access to promotional fares.

Global hotel content is a challenge for many travel programs, as well, but Spotnana pulls content from GDS and sources including Expedia and Booking.com so your travelers can find the right content wherever they are traveling.

Likewise, we were able to bring comprehensive European rail options to our customers in a matter of months, following our deep integration with Amtrak in the U.S.

Integrates with all your existing solutions for HR, expense, etc.

You shouldn’t have to switch to new solutions because your existing providers don’t connect with your travel platform.

Our open platform integrates with any third-party due to our microservices-based architecture, APIs, and proprietary System of Record. We use a combination of direct integrations, webhooks, and transformers to simplify the process of securely sharing data between services.

This means we sync with your HR feed, duty of care provider, expense platform, and more while quickly building new connections if needed by your program.

Our approach helps you avoid vendor lock-in and ensure your program’s technology stack can evolve over time to provide the best experience for your travelers and most visibility for administrators.

Quick to deliver new features and innovations

Dated platforms rely on legacy infrastructure that limits their ability to offer modern shopping experiences to travelers and time-saving innovations for travel managers.

It’s easier for a microservices-based platform to connect to third-party systems and build unique functionality, like our industry-first one-click loyalty enrollment experience with American Airlines. 

Another example is our unused ticket management solution, which enables travelers to redeem credits on their own for GDS flights as well as through our direct integrations with American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. It’s easy for travelers to see and apply their unused tickets, while travel managers have complete visibility into the value and expiration dates of their program’s credits. Building features that work across multiple suppliers and geographies, instead of building one-off fixes into patchwork solutions, has major benefits for travel programs.

Our flexible, microservices-based architecture allows us to deliver new features and industry-first functionality quickly, ensuring the quality of your travelers’ experience always improves while you save both time and money.

Can ingest data into our systems 

When you choose an open travel platform, one of the most powerful benefits is the ability to build new connections and share data between different systems. Our System of Record is built on extensible data structures, meaning we can ingest any data from any external systems in an efficient fashion.

Whether it is syncing profile data or bringing dynamic offers directly to a program from a supplier, Spotnana supports not just the expectations of today, but the experiences of tomorrow.

We also believe that your travel program’s data belongs to you; administrators can choose to use our robust set of real-time analytic tools to crunch the numbers or export raw data in a variety of formats in a matter of seconds. Our approach gives travel managers the flexibility to work however they choose, without waiting weeks or months for outdated insights into their travel programs.

Want to learn more about how an open travel platform can improve your travel program? Get a demo today.