AmTrav's Enhanced Platform to Help Business Travelers Navigate American Airlines' New Flight Booking Changes

AmTrav, the one connected platform for business travel, today announced upgrades to its corporate booking solution to continue delivering travelers and corporate travel customers the full selection of American Airlines' flights and lowest fares, even as American changes how the carrier's flights can be booked through third party corporate booking platforms beginning in April.

In an effort to modernize the shopping experience for travelers, American Airlines recently mandated that all travel agencies use "New Distribution Capability" (NDC) technology to shop and sell American flights by April 2023. NDC was developed by airlines to distribute fares, offers, and other products online faster and with more transparency than the previous travel technology. For those booking tools not connected, travelers will lose access to up to 40% of American's lowest fares and face the tough choice: book higher American fares with their current provider in order to maintain spend and safety visibility or let travelers book lower American fares outside the system, but lose spend and safety visibility.

Although many legacy travel management companies (TMCs) have resisted transitioning – citing the difficulty and complexity – AmTrav has been an outspoken proponent of modernization for many years. In 2019, AmTrav became the first business travel platform to process NDC bookings with American and today is one of a very small number of providers ready to provide uninterrupted access to American's lowest fares.

"Business travel tools already have a perception problem among travelers, because so few corporate travel booking platforms have been willing to invest time and money to modernize the user experience," said AmTrav CEO Jeff Klee. "We've taken a different approach. Because we build all of our own technology with fewer dependencies on slow, legacy third party systems, we can deliver for our travelers the type of shopping experience they get when they book personal travel, while at the same time providing their companies with the visibility, control, and savings they need."

With its latest enhancements, AmTrav's "NDC ready" solution, more than ever, brings business travelers and their companies:

• Lower Fares on American: Booking tools that have not tapped into American's NDC content will be more expensive 40% of the time.
• Access to All of American's Fare Brands: Compare and choose from the full menu of American's offerings, including the new Main Plus and Main Select bundles which include free extra legroom seats, among other benefits.
• Full Choice of Seats: Get access to every available seat, including Preferred and Main Cabin Extra, with perks from your AAdvantage status (if applicable) automatically factored in.
• Personalized Comparison-Shopping: A rich, complete comparison-shopping experience to help travelers make smart choices with details, photos, and reviews to inform fare rules, fees, seat size, WiFi, entertainment, and so much more.
• Full Visibility and Control: Like any other booking, American NDC bookings work seamlessly with AmTrav's real-time reporting, travel policy and approval flows, unused ticket tracking, and traveler locator services, keeping travel managers and C-suite execs happy.