CWT on
Thursday announced a “strategic partnership” with Spotnana through which
the mega travel management company will go to market with “a new technology-led
global travel solution for customers built on top of Spotnana’s modern
infrastructure.”
In a
blog post, Spotnana CEO Sarosh Waghmar
said the partnership combines Spotnana’s tech with CWT’s “global servicing
capabilities and the full breadth of its TMC services.”
Their
“journey together is just beginning,” he wrote.
“Many
of the corporations we have been talking to over the past few years have been
looking for a travel management company with CWT’s global scale and depth of
service offerings to adopt our platform,” according to Waghmar.
CWT
chief customer officer Nick Vournakis in an interview Thursday said Spotnana
and CWT have been talking about a partnership for “quite a while
now.”
“There’s
been a fair amount of work already going on in the background,” Vournakis said.
“That’s not to say that there’s not a fair amount of work in front of us.”
That includes work on technical integrations and go-to-market approach, but
“we have the construct and governing structure in place to ensure that we
get after that in an expeditious and measured way.”
Customers
may wonder, said Vournakis, “What does this mean for me and when do I get
it?” He answered: “We don’t have all those answers to the Nth detail
just yet, but we’ve got a growing level of excitement around the potential of
what a leading-edge technology platform can bring with the power of our people
and our overall approach to travel management.”
Backed
by Steve Singh of Concur fame, Spotnana launched in
2021 both as an accredited agency in its own right but also as the operator of
a front-to-back “travel-as-a-service” platform designed for others to
adopt and build upon.
Spotnana’s
tech stack includes a global data repository, a trip records system, agent and
traveler-facing booking applications, policy management, reporting and analysis
tools and multi-source aggregation, including access to content from global
distribution systems, direct connects, online travel agencies and other
sources. That includes New Distribution Capability-piped content, notably
from American Airlines.
Waghmar
noted that Spotnana soon will support hotel content from CWT’s RoomIt.
Vournakis
said there’s a significant interest among clients. “We’ve had the opportunity
to work in a joint way for a couple of customers already,” he said. He declined
to name them.
Already
this year, industry vet Mark Walton launched
a new TMC, Solutions Travel, on Spotnana’s platform. Spotnana also inked a deal with
business-to-business fintech company Brex.
A CWT
spokesperson confirmed that the partnership was not a full replatforming for
CWT but that Spotnana would “be another option for travelers to book and
manage their travel online,” offered alongside myCWT’s web and mobile
booking capabilities as well as existing online booking tool partners.
Still,
where they work together: “We think it’s an all-in value
proposition,” said Vournakis. “The value of the Spotnana tech is the
fact that it’s a fully integrated stack.”
Even so,
CWT has its own proprietary tech in areas like reporting and analytics. There’s
opportunities, he said, to blend the best of both.
In his
blog post, Waghmar highlighted Spotnana’s work to build “a global travel
platform,” which includes “a single global instance of our platform
for each customer.” This, he wrote, “simplifies travel management by
enabling policies and other program elements to be managed through a single
console.”
For
joint customers, CWT’s agents would use Spotnana’s desktop, “which enables
CWT agents to call up traveler details at a glance and deliver a personalized
service experience,” according to Waghmar.
He
noted that both agents and travelers on Spotnana “share the same
underlying platform, making it easy to collaborate and resolve issues based on
shared access to the same content, policies, profiles, trip history, negotiated
rates, and more.” He highlighted global data consolidation and analytics,
as well.
Waghmar
added that CWT also brings to joint clients “a rich array of global TMC
services including advanced data analysis and reporting, sustainability
reporting and planning, traveler safety measures, price optimization, supplier
negotiations, and meeting and events management.”
“It’s
not just an OBT platform and a fulfillment provider,” Vournakis said.
“You have a lot that gets wrapped around that.”
Vournakis
declined to address the commercial arrangement between Spotnana and CWT, only
to say: “We’ve got total clarity on how we work together so that it’s
win-win, and from a customer standpoint we continue to address concerns around
how we help reduce the total cost of ownership.”
The
Company Dime
last week reported CWT and Spotnana were getting ready to announce their partnership.
In
response, Cory Garner, a former American Airlines executive who now runs an
industry advisory outfit bearing his last name, said a partnership could
address challenges in content as well as servicing gaps airline NDC strategies
have wrought.
“Being
dependent upon so many links of the travel technology chain to be NDC-ready
puts TMC volume at risk,” according to Garner’s post. “A company like Spotnana
can provide a turnkey end-to-end solution to mitigate this risk. Though
Spotnana-like systems are in their infancy and likely have some kinks to work
out, and though the adoption of Spotnana likely requires a TMC to train a dedicated
team of counselors on these systems for servicing purposes, these systems can
provide a hedge against content gaps which are otherwise not being closed
quickly by Concur and the GDSs.”
At The Beat Live late last year, Garner in a keynote address viewed Spotnana as a
“contender” that stakes a claim in being a disruptor in corporate
travel.
In his
LinkedIn post last week, he noted: “Now there are signs some cracks may be
forming in the TMCs’ commitment to the exclusive use of GDSs, which could be a
boon for Spotnana and other end-to-end travel platforms which may spring forth
from other NDC aggregators.”
Jay Boehmer, with additional reporting by Michael B. Baker
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