Spotnana today announced the rollout of what the company is
calling ‘Spotnana Events,’ but don’t get the wrong impression—it doesn’t allow
users to book meetings or events. There’s no venue search, no breakout rooms
and no food and beverage parameters. This is squarely a travel management tool.
It’s landing in a moment where remote work still is a ‘thing,’
and more
travel companies are focusing on the recent surge in smaller or simpler
corporate gatherings as something that may be more than a trend. The overall meetings
sector has emerged post-pandemic as a robust revenue stream, with at least one
market research outlet projecting a compound annual
growth rate of 7.5 percent from 2023 to 2030, which means technology and
service providers are figuring out ways to apply their platforms to the space.
Spotnana’s angle is to address the travel piece of the
meetings puzzle, using what the company has termed its Travel-as-a-Service
platform, which offers an online booking tool that includes self-serve changes,
travel policy management and a holistic approach to global content, including
direct-connect integrations with New Distribution Capability connections with
major airlines—the lack of which has become a flashpoint in the last year for many
content and booking providers.
The key for the Spotnana rollout is the creation of an ‘event’—which,
again, is not the venue selection or planning of a physical event—but the
creation of an event name, event dates, description and application of relevant
branding to which all related travel data will be tagged for real-time reporting
and manifest purposes. More advanced controls allow the user to define an
allowable travel window within which invited attendees are able to book their
itineraries in keeping with existing transient travel policy or, if needed, a
specific travel policy tweaked for the individual event or type of attendee
(guest speaker versus internal employee, for example).
A critical element of Spotnana’s new rollout—and what
separates it from a more traditional transient travel play—is how it includes
non-profiled travelers. This was a space where now-defunct
Pana once played and is a smart application for a group travel tool, where
there are internal attendees with a corporate card, attendees who may pay their
own way or those who may be hosted guests. For hosted guests, Spotnana enables client
users to send a specialized link that brings guests into the booking platform
and triggers a payment mechanism assigned to the event to cover the travel
booking. That form of payment is defined by the host company and may include
virtual cards, in which case the attendee can use the Spotnana mobile app to
show that card at the hotel desk, a Spotnana spokesperson confirmed to BTN via email.
Other companies have created similar capabilities for group
travel. AmTrav’s
Gather tool has been in the market since 2022. Groupize
began to address this market in 2018. Last year, Spotnana itself integrated
with Troop as the travel booking engine for that company’s AI-driven meetings
location search tool. Spotnana’s spokesperson said via email the Troop-Spotnana
integration remains distinct from Spotnana Events, which was developed at the
behest of existing Spotnana clients to manage travel for groups.
Spotnana’s differentiator from other players likely would be
its advanced self-service for itinerary changes and cancellations and its broad-based,
unbiased content strategy—though AmTrav has similar leanings.
Spotnana’s press release emphasized that the tool could be
used to manage travel for events of any size. CEO Sarosh Waghmar, however, in a
blog post published today specifically referred to bringing “teams”
together: “Spotnana Events plays a vital role in bringing teams together, and
it represents the next step in our journey to build a travel platform that
connects humanity,” he wrote, which may offer insight into where Spotnana feels
the sweet spot is for the new tools—given the post-pandemic resilience of
hybrid work models.
Spotnana Events isn’t limited to corporates that use
Spotnana as their travel management company. It is a standalone product that
may be purchased by any corporate. Consistent with the technology company’s foundational
business model, the technology itself is available to channel partners, as
well, and may be white-labeled. So the likes of CWT,
which uses Spotnana tech in a carve-out program, or Solutions
Travel, which is built on a core of Spotnana tech, would be able to roll
out the new group booking module for a fee.
