AmTrav has introduced a feature to ease self-service of trip changes for travelers, the travel technology and management provider announced.
The Change Trips feature's capabilities include being able to change an entire trip at once, across air, hotel and car bookings, AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee said. Within air itineraries, travelers can change all or part of their itinerary regardless of the content source, including global distribution system, New Distribution Capability and direct-connect bookings. Changes also can offer options on other airlines.
"If I have a ticket on American and want to go home on a different day, and there's an American flight I can change to for free and a United flight that would be more convenient, we'll show you both options," Klee said. "We'll say, 'Here's the American option for no cost, or you can take this United option, pay $200 for this ticket now and get a credit on American for $180 that's good through July 24.' No matter what option you pick, you'll click a button, and we'll orchestrate it all behind the scenes."
The feature takes travel waivers into consideration, such as whether an airline is allowing free changes due to inclement weather.
AmTrav will ensure changes are within company policy, and the feature includes new policy parameters specifically to address changes, the company said. Changes also are automatically updated in spend reporting and travel tracking in real time.
A select group of AmTrav customers currently are using the capabilities, and they will be more widely available in September, according to AmTrav.
Change capabilities in booking tools is not a completely new feature. AmTrav, for example, already allowed online self-service cancellations and unused ticket exchanges. Most capabilities in online tools, however, are limited to certain scenarios, Klee said, and AmTrav has been working on improving those capabilities for the past 18 months.
"In the past, solutions could only change a trip if all the stars are aligned," Klee said. "If there's the slightest edge case, it becomes a manual process through an agent."
The inability to provide simple capabilities to change trips could be an "existential threat to TMCs, corporate booking tools or any intermediary in this space," Klee said. "During Covid, airlines got good at making it easy to change trips, but indirect channels have not kept pace."