Cancellations will no longer automatically be a write‑off, at least for business travel technology provider, Spotnana, as it's unveiled a new feature that automates the management and reassignment of unused airline tickets.
With this capability, a ticket that was not used for a flight can be converted into credit in a company‑level shared pool. That credit is then available to another employee for a later booking.
To keep transfers smooth, the platform identifies eligible credits associated with a traveller.
At booking, any such credit is flagged as available. For United Airlines NDC credits, the name change is fully automated, the company have said.
In other configurations, it is handled indirectly, typically by creating a task in Spotnana’s Agent Desktop.
"The process of reassigning credits to other employees has been complex and time-consuming," said Jeff Christensen, managing director, global distribution strategy at United Airlines.
"Spotnana is the first technology platform to fully automate United NDC name changes and enable corporate travelers to redeem eligible United NDC tickets that have been allocated to a company pool."
Spotnana hopes to reduce the loss of value caused by the expiry of unused credits.
"While 96% of unused credits are currently redeemed through Spotnana prior to expiration, our latest enhancements aim to get this as close to 100% as possible," said Seth Anagnostis, senior director of content and distribution at Spotnana.
"Spotnana's new capability allows corporate travel programs to reallocate unused credits into a shared company pool, reducing manual processing, maximizing credit utilization, and optimizing overall travel spend."
Though available now, a future version will see Spotnana let customers create rules to automate credit transfers based on predefined criteria.
