AGOURA HILLS, Calif. — AmTrav, the one-stop platform for business travel, announced today the launch of its brand-new flight shopping experience in their award winning a2b booking tool.
“The business travel industry has been talking and talking about how to close content gaps and improve air shopping for almost a decade,” said AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee. “But, despite countless working groups and forums, more three letter acronyms have emerged than customer benefits.”
Referring to the industry’s fledgling New Distribution Capability initiative (NDC), Klee added: “Most TMCs are waiting around for others in the industry to solve their travelers’ problems, but we’ve committed to tackling these challenges ourselves, without waiting for production-ready NDC. We spent 2020 iterating, connecting to different data sources and curating our own content to deliver tangible benefits now. We’re still far from the finish line, but we’re way ahead of everyone else in the race to help customers easily find the flights and fares that they need.”
Although AmTrav has been showing travelers all of the available fare brands on every flight since 2017 and was the first TMC to go live with a basic Next Generation Storefront (NGS) display in 2019, the new experience has been rebuilt and reimagined around the changing ways that airlines offer their products the resulting frustration for travelers who either are not presented all the options or aren’t able to adequately compare them.
Beginning with a fresh slate, fresh colors and fonts, a2b’s new design allows bookers to compare flights and fares, quickly finding just the right option:
* Inspired by the most current NGS standard, the new flight display shows all available fares aligned vertically, so customers won’t accidentally compare a Basic Economy fare to a Regular Economy fare, can find cheaper options for similar products, and can spot when extra legroom or a premium seat is available for a small buyup.
* Since fare brands are complicated and confusing — what’s the difference between this Basic fare and that Basic fare, and what’s a Blue fare? — travelers can quickly compare fares from the same flight or across multiple flights to see the seat details, flight amenities, baggage allowances and change policies side-by-side for easy apples-to-apples comparison.
* Seats matter a lot, so not only does AmTrav show a preview of available seats on the seat map plus seat details like width, legroom and whether it’s a lie-flat or even all-aisle access, but customers can also see AmTrav-curated onboard images and detailed reviews for 83 different airline/aircraft combinations, with more being added.
* Road warriors know that in-flight amenities are not all created equal so AmTrav lets travelers drill down beyond the standard WiFi and in-flight entertainment icons to answer questions like “How fast is this WiFi?”, “Does it work gate to gate?”, “What’s the quality of this video screen and what can I watch on it — live TV, on-demand movies and more?”
* Although it’s not uncommon for booking tools to allow travelers to filter flights by time, airlines, airports, or number of stops, AmTrav now lets you filter by amenities, too, so you can see only flights that have fast WiFi, in seat power, middle seats blocked, or all aisle access in business class, to name a few.
* The new flight shopping experience includes full support for AmTrav-negotiated or
* company-negotiated fare bundles to streamline purchase of seat upgrades, baggage, wifi and more — travelers can clearly see what’s included and book these new offerings right in the tool.
As always, AmTrav’s new flight shopping display automatically applies companies’ travel policies, pre-trip approvals and negotiated discounts so bookers can easily pick fares that work for both the traveler and the company.
Content sources used in the new flight display include Routehappy by ATPCO, NDC content from 3 airlines (with more coming soon), multiple GDSs, and content developed and collected by AmTrav.
“With AmTrav, you can have it all in one package that’s designed for you: a consumer-grade booking tool, ready-to-help expert Travel Advisors and Relationship managers, and flexible, accurate reporting and controls,” said AmTrav President Craig Fichtelberg. “Traditionally companies had to choose between a slow, antiquated booking tool that bookers dread using or a wild-west approach with no controls that left travel administrators to collect spending data and track travelers in spreadsheets.”
Hear from Jeff about his inspiration and the process of creating the new booking tool, and see a video tour of the redesigned flight shopping, here: https://www.amtrav.com/blog/new-year-faster-flight-selection-with-amtrav
About AmTrav Corporate Travel
AmTrav is a new kind of technology and services platform that’s driving business travel into a bold new era. Our easy-to-use solution empowers travelers and travel bookers to be more productive. Companies of all sizes use AmTrav to book trips, find savings, set travel policies, manage payments and expenses, and keep their travelers safe. Travelers love AmTrav because our one connected platform provides a seamless experience across the travel ecosystem and our travel experts and relationship managers are always ready to help. More than 1000 businesses use AmTrav to go places, meet people, build meaningful connections, and get the most out of every trip.
Learn more: https://www.amtrav.com/
Related link: https://www.amtrav.com/
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