September 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

Air France and KLM Direct NDC integration

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

• Access NDC-exclusive promotional fares.

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

• Make or change a seat selection for a flight after the booking has been made, without agent involvement.

• View personalized seat maps based on their frequent flier status.

For details on all our direct NDC integrations, see our NDC Overview.

Traveler Experience

Air: Automated disruption management

Spotnana now automatically handles disruptions for minor airline schedule changes. Our platform will automatically process flight schedule changes that meet the conditions outlined below. For these scenarios the change will be automatically accepted, and travelers will simply receive email and mobile notifications.

• Direct flights (no stops): Schedule changes of less than 30 minutes, where the origin, destination, and flight number remain unchanged.

• Indirect flights (1+ stops): Schedule changes of less than 30 minutes, where the origin, destination, and flight number remain unchanged, and the minimum connecting time remains valid.

• Same-day return flights: Schedule changes of less than 15 minutes, where the origin, destination, and flight number remain unchanged, and the minimum connecting time remains valid.

For more significant flight disruption changes that do not meet the conditions above, the airline will generally contact the traveler if the traveler has shared their contact information with the airline.

For more details, see Travel disruptions and emergencies - Air.

Air: Seat selection enhancements

We have introduced the following seat selection improvements to provide clearer communication to travelers:

• Loyalty program members: If we are unable to show loyalty program seat pricing (for travelers who are members), we will now display a message that states "eligible member-specific pricing is exclusively available on the operating airline's website.”

• Codeshare and interline flights: Codeshare flights represent a marketing agreement between two airlines (very common between airlines that have an alliance) where a seat is purchased on one airline (the marketing carrier), but the flight is actually operated by a different airline (the operating carrier). Travelers attempting to reserve seats for codeshare/interline flights will be prevented from doing so and will receive a message indicating that seat selection is not available for that segment of their trip. In these scenarios, the system will recommend that they reserve a seat directly on the operating airline's website.

Hotel: New design in hotel search

We have made the following enhancements to the hotel search page to provide travelers with an improved hotel shopping experience:

• We now show five hotel listings per screen (based on a 14” laptop).

• Travelers can click anywhere on the hotel listing to get to the hotel details page.

For more details, see Book a hotel. 

Compare air to rail travel options

When a traveler performs an air search on Spotnana's platform for a domestic trip that is less than five hours train time, we now provide travelers with the option to view train travel alternatives (when a viable rail itinerary is available). The traveler can choose to view the rail options and book their rail trip, or if they choose not to travel by train, they can quickly switch back to see their air search results. 

For more details, see Book a flight.

Travel Management

Travel data included on the Trips page and within a downloadable itinerary

During the booking process, custom fields can be used to present questions to travelers when booking travel. As a result, data is captured from these fields. The travel data obtained from these custom fields is now available to view in the following two places:

• Trips: Within the Trips page, select the trip that contains the booking you want to view. Expand it to see additional details, including Travel Data. 

• Itinerary: Within the Trips page, select the trip that contains the booking for which you want to download an itinerary. Locate the booking (air, hotel, rail, car) within that trip for which you want to download an itinerary. Click the download icon (top right corner of the booking tile). The booking's itinerary will be downloaded to your local device. This now includes a section for Travel Data.

Download entire employee list (with background processing)

Company administrators now have the ability to download a CSV file of all employees in their organization who have profiles in Spotnana’s platform from the Travelers page. Since this process is asynchronous, the administrator can make the request and then proceed to their next task.

1. To do this, select Users from the Program menu. The Travelers page will be displayed. 

2. Click Download. 

Upon clicking Download, administrators will see a message in the platform informing them that their download has started and will later receive an email with a download link once the file is ready. 

For more details, see Download a list of all users. 

Events

Event filtering and bulk actions

Spotnana Events provides simplified travel management for groups traveling to the same destination, empowering employees and guests to book and manage their travel for meetings and events. 

The following enhancements have been made to the event travel management experience, allowing event coordinators to manage travelers and events at scale:

• Filtering - Event coordinators can now filter invited travelers based on their invitation status (“Invited” or “Not invited yet”).

• Group actions - Event coordinators can now select groups of travelers they have invited to an event and perform bulk actions. This includes the ability to send event invites and event reminders in bulk, or to remove invited travelers in bulk.

• More relevant automated messaging for reminder emails - When sending event emails to multiple travelers that includes both uninvited and already-invited travelers, the Spotnana platform detects which travelers need to receive an initial first time invite email and which travelers need to receive a reminder email. Event coordinators will see a pop-up confirmation, notifying them of the number of invitation emails and reminder emails that will be sent. For the reminder email, the header and subject will specify that the email is a simple reminder to book travel for the event.

• Traveler removal - Event coordinators now have the ability to remove multiple travelers at once from an event, so long as they have not already made bookings for the event. Any event-related bookings that have already been made for an event attendee must be canceled before the attendee can be removed from the event.

For more details, see Create and publish an event (Administrators only).

Custom fields and Events

When creating custom fields, company administrators can specify which users within their organization will see the custom field when booking travel. Expanding on this existing capability, company administrators can now also control which users see the custom field based on Trip type. The company administrator can select from the following Trip type options:

• All trips - The custom field will be required on all trips, including events trips.

• Events trips only - The custom field will only be available for selection on event trips, and the event coordinator can then select whether they want to add it to their event.

• Regular trips only - The custom field will only be required on regular trips (not on event trips).

For details on how to create custom fields, see Create a custom field. For details on how to view answers to customer fields, see View answers to custom fields.

When creating a new Event, the event coordinator will be shown the custom fields that have been configured to “All trips” and “Event trips only,” and have the following controls:

• For custom fields set to “All trips,” the event coordinator has the option to answer the field’s question for travelers or let travelers answer it themselves. If the coordinator chooses to answer for travelers, the custom field will be hidden from travelers. For example, if there's a custom field for “Reason for travel,” the event coordinator can choose to answer the custom field on their travelers’ behalf and set it to “Conference” for everyone. 

• For custom fields set to “Events trips only” and that are not set as required, the event coordinator can choose if they want to show or not show that specific custom field within the event they are creating. For example, if there’s a custom field for “T-shirt size,” the event coordinator can select if they want to make it visible for a given event.

Any changes to custom fields once an event has been published will only impact bookings that have not yet been made. 

For more details, see Create and publish an event (Administrators only).

Payments

TMC configuration for delayed invoicing

TMC administrators now have the ability to set-up delayed invoicing for their customers for flight and/or rail travel bookings. This allows TMCs to offer the companies they work with the option to pay via credit cards or delayed invoicing. Additional details:

• Only individuals assigned the TMC admin user role have permissions to set-up delayed invoicing for a company. Individuals assigned the Company admin user role have ‘read only’ permissions to view the delayed invoicing configuration (i.e., they can see the setting but not change it).

• TMC admins can set restrictions on who may use the payment method based on user role (“Everyone” OR “Admins and agents only”) and traveler type (“All travelers”, “Employee”, “Company guest”, “Personal guest”). They can also configure the countries, legal entities, departments, or cost centers permitted to use it.

• If delayed invoicing is enabled by the TMC for a company, the TMC must pay the supplier via credit card in real time or via a settlement mechanism outside of the Spotnana platform. This will depend on how the supplier wants to be paid.

• If delayed invoicing is enabled by the TMC for a company, travelers of that company will see that as the only available payment option on the checkout page when booking.

To configure delayed invoicing, select Company from the Program menu. Then, select Payment methods from the Payment section in the side navigation. 

This feature is not automatically enabled for TMC channel partners. Please contact your Spotnana client support manager if you want this feature enabled.

Agent Experience

Companion view enhancements

Spotnana’s agent companion view provides travel support agents with easy access to all the necessary information they need to service a traveler.

The following enhancements have been made to the agent companion view:

• Updated user interface: Cleaner agent experience, including adding the servicing TMC along the top section of the companion view.

• Links: For easier access, links to the traveler’s Profile page, Trips page, and Company information page have been added along the top section of the companion view.

• Loyalty details: Under the Loyalty section (within the Profile menu), loyalty details now include both the supplier name and the supplier code.

• Payment information: Under the Payment section (within the Profile menu), agents now have the ability to view all central payment methods available to the traveler, with the ability to unmask credit card numbers to book offline travel. Unused credits are also displayed in a cleaner format for agents to access.

• Policy information: Within the Policies menu, agents can now view dynamic flight budgets if they have been set by the traveler’s company.

• Booking restrictions: Within the Booking restrictions menu, agents now have the ability to view any country restrictions set by the traveler’s company, along with the restricted booking types.

• Trip information: Within the Trips menu, agents now have the ability to view all of the travel booking types within a trip along with the confirmation numbers. Agents can now also share an itinerary or download a consolidated itinerary directly from the companion view.

• Supplier information: Under the supplier sections (Air suppliers, Hotel suppliers, etc.), agents now have the ability to view any applicable air or car negotiated contracts, Snap codes, and the associated airline.