Spotnana’s 2022 Year in Review

It’s been an exciting year for Spotnana, and we have made tremendous progress building our Travel-as-a-Service Platform. From delighting travelers with industry-first features to empowering our partners with powerful technology innovations, we are modernizing the infrastructure of the travel industry.

Here’s a quick summary of our highlights from this past year. 

Supercharging growth with our Series B

In July we announced that Spotnana raised a $75 million Series B funding round, welcoming Durable Capital as lead investor. They joined existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Mubadala Capital, Iconiq, and others to support our vision for modernizing the infrastructure of the travel industry.

“Spotnana is a completely new type of solution provider for the travel industry,” said Henry Ellenbogen, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Durable Capital Partners LP, in our announcement. “They are experiencing tremendous growth, because their innovations go far beyond an elegant online booking tool. By modernizing the entire technology stack for booking a trip, they are breaking down the walls between suppliers and travelers and opening the door to a new level of personalization in the booking process. Spotnana has the potential to be a long-term, sustainable success.”

We’ve used the funding to grow our global team with a particular focus on our engineering, product, and travel operations teams, enabling us to bring industry-first features to our platform.

Industry-firsts with American Airlines

In September we announced the details of our partnership with American Airlines, the world’s biggest airline.

We’ve crafted a truly modern retailing experience for travelers that incorporates, and goes beyond, the New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard. Our implementation includes ticketing, post-ticketing, and servicing NDC bookings as well as an industry-first one-click enrollment for travelers in American’s AAdvantage® loyalty program, enhanced capabilities through Spotnana-powered personalization, and enhanced fare offerings. 

“The Spotnana platform utilizes American’s enhanced direct connection to deliver a more seamless booking experience for customers.” said Neil Geurin, Managing Director of Airline Retailing at American Airlines, of the announcement. “Our corporate customers who book through Spotnana will now have access to a modern retailing experience, inclusive of elevated offers, benefits, and ancillaries they value through a single, corporate-approved online booking tool.”

This is just the first of multiple partnerships we will announce in the future that bring new capabilities and delightful experiences to travelers around the world.

Thought leadership and innovation

Spotnana’s approach to modernizing the infrastructure of travel is making an impact on the wider travel ecosystem, as well.

Spotnana was named to the 2022 Business Travel Europe Hotlist in January 2022, saying “Spotnana is to the travel industry what the Traveling Wilburys were to pop music – a supergroup bringing together some of the best-known names and talent in the business.”

As the year progressed, our team spoke at dozens of industry conferences worldwide and was widely cited as a new entrant to the business travel space that is making an impact around the world.

World-class product and partnerships

We’ve made great progress in bringing unparalleled travel experiences to our customers using our Travel-as-a-Service Platform.

Since Spotnana uses a modern System of Record that goes beyond the traditional airline Passenger Name Record (PNR), we have been able to bring innovation to the industry at a fast pace. In areas from global travel management to sustainability and personalization, Spotnana is bringing innovation to the features most important for travel managers and business travelers alike. 

We’ve also partnered with world-class companies pushing business travel forward. Spotnana is an open platform for innovation, bringing travel to a wider audience and providing our own capabilities to others to use as their own.

The best people

2022 has been a period of rapid growth for the Spotnana team. In addition to adding approximately 50% more employees to our talented team of Spotters located around the world, we added a number of experienced executives to our leadership team including:

• Jessica Bartlett – VP People, who most recently served as SVP People for Braze, which went public in 2021.
• Denise Bean – VP Accounting and Business Operations, who most recently served as VP and Corporate Controller of Trupanion.
• Jessica Lewis – VP Finance, who most recently held a variety of finance leadership roles at SAP and Concur.
• Justin Schuster – VP Marketing, who most recently served as Head of Marketing for Blend, which went public in 2021.

We’re ready for 2023

Interested in finding out more about what Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform can do for your travel program or business? Drop us a line here to get a demo.

Want to join the team that is transforming travel? Check out our Careers page to find out more.