CWT, Spotnana Announce 'Strategic Partnership'

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."