JTB Business Travel is partnering with travel tech provider Spotnana to enhance both its own offering and operations and those of sustainable travel specialist Goodwings, in which JTB is a minority stakeholder.
The partnership will see JTB begin to offer Spotnana's booking platform to clients later this year but will commence with the integration of Spotnana's core infrastructure with JTB partner Goodwings.
JTB—which is based in the United States but has a presence in 11 European markets—said the new partnership will "enhance, simplify and modernize" business travel management for its primarily SME customers. It noted that "cost and efficiency remain pivotal" to its clients and that Spotnana's modern infrastructure will provide access to comprehensive global travel content and enhanced self-service capabilities.
Denmark-based Goodwings—which uses its booking revenue to counteract clients' Scope 3.6 emissions by investing in SAF and carbon offsets—is now rolling out Spotnana's booking technology to its customers. At the same time, JTB has begun providing offline service for Goodwings customers after it took a minority stake in the company last summer, helping to build out its capabilities as a fully-fledged TMC.
"We are powering the Goodwings platform in terms of content and servicing and that will be done using the Spotnana platform. What we're creating with them is almost a new TMC that is very tech- and sustainability-focused," said JTB Business Travel Network's vice president of global business travel, Geert de Boo.
Prior to JTB's investment in Goodwings, de Boo said it had operated primarily as a hotel booking platform, but "clients told them they wanted to book everything in one place—not just hotels."
De Boo explained that JTB USA's investment in Goodwings marked the start of an exclusive servicing and fulfillment partnership and the creation of a temporary booking solution for all travel needs to bridge the gap to its partnership with Spotnana. "Many new [Goodwings] customers who were secured over the past few months were not implemented on the temporary platform but waited until they could go live on Spotnana now," he said.
Many Goodwings customers, who are predominantly located in the Nordics and across Europe but are increasingly global, come from an unmanaged background and are "very demanding when it comes to the user experience," said de Boo. "Many are very tech-focused, and they want a consumer-like experience."
He added: "Phase one of this new partnership is launching [Spotnana] for all Goodwings customers. All our energy is focused on getting that up and running well and then we will shift to JTB's customers. This [sort of partnership] is something we're seeing across the industry right now—the bringing together of high-tech software and high-touch service."
Originally published in BTN Europe.