[ad_1]
Spotnana today announced the launch 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 is no venue search, no breakout rooms, and no food and drink parameters. This is purely a travel management tool.
It comes at a time when remote working is still a “thing,” and more and more travel companies are looking at the recent surge in smaller or simpler corporate gatherings as something that might be more than just a trend. The entire conference industry has become a strong source of revenue after the epidemic, and at least one market research agency predicts a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% from 2023 to 2030, which means that technology and service providers are looking for ways to apply their platforms to space.
Spotnana’s angle is to solve the travel side of the meetings puzzle, leveraging what the company calls a “travel-as-a-service” platform, which offers online booking tools including self-service changes, travel policy management and turnkey solutions. Global content, including direct connectivity integration with major airlines’ new distribution capabilities – the lack of which has become a flash point for many content and booking providers over the last year.
Key to Spotnana’s launch is the creation of “events,” which are not venue selection or planning for a physical event, but an app that creates an event name, event date, description, and associated branding, and all relevant travel data will be tagged for instant reporting and checklist purposes. More advanced controls allow users to define an allowed travel window within which invited attendees can book travel based on existing ad hoc travel policies or, if desired, based on a single event or attendee type (invited speaker). ) adjust specific travel policies compared to in-house employees, for example).
A key element of Spotnana’s new launch—and what sets it apart from more traditional short-term travel games—is how inclusive it is of impersonal travelers. This is where the now-defunct Pana once played, a smart app for group travel tools with internal attendees who have corporate cards, attendees who can pay themselves, or attendees who may be hosting guests . For hosted guests, Spotnana enables customer users to send a dedicated link that takes the guest to the booking platform and triggers the payment mechanism assigned to the campaign to pay for the travel booking. A Spotnana spokesperson confirmed to BTN via email that this payment method is defined by the host company and may include a virtual card, in which case attendees can present the card at the hotel counter using the Spotnana mobile app.
Other companies have created similar features for group travel. AmTrav’s Gather tool has been on the market since 2022. Groupize started to enter this market in 2018. Last year, Spotnana itself integrated with Troop as a travel booking engine for the company’s AI-powered meeting location finder tool. A Spotnana spokesperson said via email that the Troop-Spotnana integration remains separate from Spotnana Events, which was developed at the request of existing Spotnana customers for managing group travel.
What may differentiate Spotnana from other players is its advanced self-service for trip changes and cancellations and its broad-based, unbiased content strategy — though AmTrav has similar tendencies.
Spotnana’s press release highlights that the tool can be used to manage journeys for events of any size. However, CEO Sarosh Waghmar specifically mentioned bringing “the team” together in a blog post published today: “Spotnana Events plays a vital role in bringing the team together and represents the The next step in the journey of travel platforms that connect humans,” he wrote, which may help understand where Spotnana sees the new tool’s sweet spot given the post-pandemic resilience of hybrid work models.
Spotnana Events isn’t limited to companies using Spotnana as their travel management company. It is a standalone product that any company can purchase. Consistent with the technology company’s basic business model, the technology itself will also be available to channel partners, possibly on a white-label basis. So companies like CWT (which is using Spotnana technology in a spin-off program) or Solutions Travel (which is built with Spotnana technology at its core) will be able to pay to launch new group booking modules.
[ad_2]
Source link