How Spotnana’s Content Engine works

Why we built the Spotnana Content Engine — and why nothing like it has ever existed

When I started Spotnana, it wasn’t just to build another travel platform. It was to rebuild the foundations of travel technology itself — to break open the walled gardens, shatter the legacy constraints, and create a new kind of infrastructure for the entire industry. The kind that would allow anyone, anywhere in the world, to access every piece of travel content available — fairly, openly, and instantly.

This vision demanded a radical rethinking of how travel content is sourced, processed, and delivered. That’s why we built Spotnana’s Content Engine — the most flexible, intelligent, and extensible content aggregation system the travel industry has ever seen.

This isn’t just better plumbing. It’s an entirely new architectural model, and it’s the cornerstone of why Spotnana is fundamentally different.

The problem: content fragmentation is a structural failure

If you’re managing a travel program today, you’re up against fragmentation on every front.

APIs are everywhere — from GDSs, NDCs, PSSs, LCCs, OTAs, and hotel CRSs — but they’re all built differently, expose different fields, and encode offers in inconsistent formats. That complexity isn’t just an annoyance. It’s a bottleneck to innovation, to automation, and ultimately, to delivering great traveler experiences.

Most traditional TMCs were never built to handle this. Their systems are tied to the concept of the PNR, which forces everything into a text-based record designed decades ago. Adding a new content source often requires months of custom scripts and manual workarounds just to function, let alone scale.

That’s the gap we set out to close. Not with patches, but with a new kind of engine.

The Spotnana Content Engine: how it works

From day one, we designed Spotnana to be independent of the PNR. That meant we had to build a system capable of speaking the native language of every content source — interpreting it, cleaning it up, deduplicating it, and turning it into a single unified format that our platform (and any partner) can use.

Here’s how it works, under the hood:

1. Real-time content ingestion

When a traveler or agent searches, we instantly trigger API calls to every relevant source: GDSs, NDC connections, OTAs, LCCs, PSSs, hotel CRSs, and more.

The payloads are massive. Some APIs return a dozen results in one call. Others require multiple chained calls to get fare details, policy rules, ancillaries, seat maps, and pricing.

We built our infrastructure using microservices and horizontally scalable cloud systems that can fetch and handle this data in real time. No waiting. No caching last night’s results.

2. Deduplication across channels

The same flight can appear in different formats across EDIFACT, NDC, and OTA content. The same hotel room might be available from different wholesalers, each with different amenity formats.

Spotnana deduplicates aggressively using fare category, brand names, fare codes, UTAs, cabin class, and even cancellation terms. And when content overlaps between EDIFACT and NDC, we prioritize NDC — because that’s where we can unlock richer functionality, such as seat selection, waivers, and real-time exchanges.

This is not something you can bolt on. It had to be built into our travel platform’s DNA.

3. Data normalization with AI

A big part of making content comparable is translating the chaos of unstructured data.

“Free bkfst”, “breakfast included”, and “code 89” might all mean the same thing — but only if you’ve built systems that can extract, normalize, and compare those values. We use rule-based pipelines and machine learning to identify and align data fields across content types.

This also enables us to decompose fare rules into structured elements, which we then use to drive automation in downstream services, such as exchanges and cancellations. The less travelers need an agent, the better the experience and the lower the cost.

4. Enrichment and reconciliation

Some content sources give us photos. Some don’t. Some let us price ancillaries in line. Others don’t. We fill those gaps by enriching raw results with third-party data from partners such as ATPCO, Leonardo, and others.

This requires building custom adapters and reconciliation layers for each source. Every API has quirks. We embrace those quirks instead of ignoring them.

5. Policy-aware ranking and filtering

Once the content is cleaned, deduplicated, normalized, and enriched, our ranking engine applies corporate policies, preferred suppliers, negotiated rates, unused credits, and user preferences.

Travelers see everything — even out-of-policy options — because trust comes from transparency. Filters enable users to sort by what matters most to them, whether that’s the lowest price, airline loyalty, or sustainability preferences.

Everything is presented in a single, consistent UI for travelers and agents alike.

6. Spotnana’s trip container

Once booked, all elements — air, hotel, rail, and car — are added to Spotnana’s universal trip container. This enables us to display the full itinerary, run trip-level analytics, and power workflows such as “cancel entire trip” or “notify traveler of policy changes.”

Because we’ve abstracted away the source systems, these workflows are fast, reliable, and consistent, regardless of where the booking originated.

Why this has never been built before

It’s easy to underestimate what it takes to make all this work. The travel industry has been attempting to address content fragmentation for decades, and most efforts have merely pushed the issue down the road.

We didn’t take the shortcut. We rebuilt the infrastructure from the ground up.

• We’re not tied to legacy PNRs. That’s what makes truly flexible workflows possible.
• We don’t privilege any content source. We integrate everything on equal footing.
• We built for extensibility. New content sources can be added quickly, without disrupting the system.
• We designed for automation. Every piece of data is structured and actionable.
  

The result? Spotnana can offer a deeper, richer, and more unified view of travel content than anyone else in the industry. And we’re only getting started.

This is why I started Spotnana

I didn’t come into this industry to incrementally improve what already exists. I came in because I believe global travel should be open, intelligent, and deeply human — not boxed in by outdated systems and opaque silos.

Our Content Engine is one of the purest expressions of that belief. It makes travel content a utility — accessible to anyone, anywhere, through open APIs and clean data. It empowers travelers with transparency and choice. It empowers companies with cost control and automation. And it empowers an entire ecosystem to innovate on top of a modern foundation.

That’s the future we’re building at Spotnana.

We welcome everyone to join us on this journey — whether you’re a travel seller, travel provider, a TMC, or a developer — we’d love to work with you.