April 2024 - Release Notes

Here are the most recent enhancements to Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform. The features are grouped by functional category (Content, Self-service, etc.). 

Content 

Emirates Airlines Direct NDC integration

Spotnana has added a direct NDC integration with Emirates Airlines, providing travelers with expanded content and fare options. Travelers can also:

• Make self-service cancellations on their own, without agent involvement

• Place a ticket on hold

• Make or change a seat selection for a flight after the booking has been made

• View personalized seat maps based on their frequent flier status post booking

Traveler Experience 

Expanded capabilities with Southwest Airlines

As a result of our direct integration with Southwest, we have added two new enhancements. We now allow travelers to:

• Check-in to their flight directly from the Spotnana platform

• Automatically redeem their Southwest unused credits during the booking process, without the need for agent assistance

Travelers who have Southwest unused flight credits will see them in multiple places in the Spotnana Online Booking Tool:

• On the homepage below the search box

• At the top of the search results page if a search includes flights and fares where a credit can be redeemed  

• Within the Payment section of their Profile under Unused Credits

For more details, see Redeem an unused flight credit.

New preferred languages added: Canadian French and Latin-American Spanish

To meet the needs of travelers across the globe, we have added support for the following two  languages: Canadian French and Latin-American Spanish. 

In total, we now support eleven languages (or regional language variants) in the platform: English (US), English (AU), English (CA), English (UK), French (FR), French (CA), German, Japanese, Spanish (ES), Spanish (LATAM), and Portuguese.

To set or change the preferred language, travelers can go to the Personal tab within their Profile and then scroll down to Language preference and select their preferred language from the menu. Once set, the traveler’s entire experience from initial search through to checkout will be in their selected language. For more details, see Set preferred language.

Travel Management

Company reports: new layout and new reports 

We have introduced a new layout to the Company reports page. To view this, select Company reports from the Analytics menu. All available reports are listed in a sidebar on the left hand side of the page. The reports are now grouped under the following categories: General, Spend, Savings, Compliance, and Events. 

In addition to the new layout, we have also released the following new reports:

• Overall Spend - This report is available in the Spend category and includes metrics such as total spend by booking type and by month, total ancillary spend, total spend on changes, total taxes and fees spent, number of travelers, number of trips, number of bookings, spend by booking source, and more.

• Policy - Top Travelers - This report is available in the Compliance category and  includes metrics such as policy compliance percentage, out-of-policy bookings, travelers with the most out-of-policy bookings, and more.

• Policy Violations - This report is available in the Compliance category and includes metrics such as total out-of-policy spend, out-of-policy spend by booking type, out-of-policy spend by department and traveler, out-of-policy spend by reason, and more.

• Event Analytics - This report is available in the Events category and includes metrics such as total company event spend, reporting by booking type, manifest reporting, and more. If your company does not have the Events feature enabled and you would like to get access to this offering, please email customersuccess@spotnana.com.  

Policies: Ability to restrict car bookings by engine type

Administrators now have the ability to restrict car rental bookings based on engine type, providing more control over the types of cars their employees can rent. For example, you can choose to restrict engine types that are less eco-friendly, hence reducing your company’s carbon footprint. To do this, select Policies from the Program menu (the Default policy page will be displayed). Then, expand the Car section, scroll down to the Car engine types not allowed section, and use the  menu to select the car engine types you want to restrict travelers from booking. For more details, see Setting approval policies.

Ability to set search country as an audience variable in custom fields

Custom fields allow travel administrators to collect specific information from travelers through questions presented during the checkout stage of the booking process. Administrators can specify which users within their organization will see a question when booking travel. Search country has now been added as an additional variable admins can use to present a question when a traveler is going to a specific country. For more details, see Create a custom field.

Bulk upload for offices and legal entities

Administrators are now able to upload Offices and Legal entities in bulk via a CSV file. For example, to do this for legal entities, select Company from the Program menu. Then, select Legal entities from the Company section on the left. The Legal entities page will be displayed. To add new legal entities in bulk, click Add and then click Upload CSV file. 

In addition, we have made the following usability improvements:

• To view instructions for file uploads or downloading a CSV template, click the Download button on either the Legal entities or Offices pages.

• To view an activity log, administrators can click on the clock icon on either the Legal entities or Offices pages to expand a side panel to see their most recent file uploads and related status notifications.

• If an error occurs in the file upload, the error file now contains all columns pre-populated with the information uploaded along with the error reason. Users can simply modify this error file and upload it again.

Receipts for travel bookings

Travelers can now view receipts for travel bookings that serve as proof of payment. Receipts are available on the Trips page. They can be accessed by clicking Payment details and then selecting Show Invoices and Receipts. 

Receipts will not be generated for post-pay bookings, such as pay at property or pay at pick up location.

Updated HR user list template

We have made improvements to our HR user upload process and template and deprecated the old user list template format. The updated user list template includes a new Action column, which allows admins to indicate whether an employee record needs to be added, updated, or removed from your company’s Spotnana instance.

If you or your team currently update HR data using SFTP or manual uploads, you will need to update the file format.

• Customers who manually upload travelers need to shift to the new user list template format and make the necessary changes to their HR user file. 

• Customers who use SFTP feeds need to make the necessary changes to their SFTP file.

If you or your team are using the deprecated user list template, your HR upload will fail to update since it will not contain the now required Action column. Existing profiles, however, will remain unaffected. HRIS and API customers are not impacted.