Lufthansa Group invests in Spotnana, supports direct NDC integrations

Spotnana has an incredibly ambitious mission to modernize the infrastructure of the travel industry. Many of the people I spoke with early on about investing in Spotnana either didn’t think massive transformation was possible, or didn’t understand how much this could open up a new era of possibilities.

There are a few people who believed in Spotnana very early on, who instantly grasped the potential of our ideas and had the courage to bet on the strength of our vision and leadership team. 

I am eternally grateful to Johannes Walter, Head of Channel Partners at Lufthansa Group, for being an early champion and supporter of Spotnana. Johannes understood from our earliest conversations that a new, modern tech stack for travel could pave the way for modern distribution that enables richer, more seamless travel experiences. 

Today I am excited to announce that Lufthansa Group invested last year in Spotnana’s $75M Series B round. In addition, I’m thrilled to share that Spotnana and Lufthansa Group have worked together to simultaneously deliver direct NDC integrations to Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS, Air Dolomiti, and Eurowings Discover. We decided to make these announcements together to highlight that our relationship is grounded in innovation above all else.

Building direct NDC integrations that support the entire traveler journey

The direct NDC integrations we’ve built with American Airlines, United Airlines, and now Lufthansa Group airlines all support the entire traveler journey from booking through to servicing. Specific capabilities of our direct integrations with Lufthansa Group airlines include personalized shopping experiences, support for custom bundles, self-service changes and cancellations, comprehensive servicing, and real-time global analytics. 

Spotnana provides a single platform for both travelers and agents. As a result, any agent using Spotnana is able to see the same content, policies, profiles, and negotiated rates as the travelers they serve. In addition, when new features are released to travelers, agents are able to immediately access the same capabilities.

Advancing the state of digital air retailing with Green Fares

Lufthansa Group has driven important innovation through the creation of Green Fares, which reduce up to 20% of flight-related CO2 emissions by the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and offset parts or all of the remaining 80% of the CO2 emissions by an equivalent contribution to high-quality climate protection projects. 

Spotnana is the first Travel-as-a-Service platform to support Lufthansa Group’s Green Fares via NDC. Through our direct NDC integration, travelers and agents can now view Green Fares side-by-side with other fare options in Spotnana’s next generation storefront, making it easier to make sustainable travel choices.

The power of Spotnana’s content-agnostic architecture

We were able to easily incorporate Lufthansa Group’s Green Fares into Spotnana’s platform, because Spotnana has a content-agnostic architecture that is designed to support any form of travel content from any source. 

Spotnana’s Content Engine breaks down offers into constituent components, stores all data elements in our proprietary System of Record, takes action on individual data elements through microservices in our Booking Engine, and displays offers in a consistent, unbiased manner in both our Online Booking Tool and Agent Desktop. 

In order to support Lufthansa’s Green Fares, we capture and store unique data elements to display fare attributes, and we are working on further enhancements to track the impact of green fares on carbon emissions all the way through to our analytics. 

“Spotnana’s approach to NDC integration and agility has enabled them to quickly build deep integrations to our NDC APIs. It is evident that their modern architecture is designed to leverage the potential of NDC and foster rapid innovation in the industry.”

– Frank Naeve, Senior Vice President Global Markets & Stations for the Lufthansa Group

Powering a new generation of traveler experiences

At Spotnana we’ve chosen to focus on building direct NDC integrations because this allows us to take advantage of every capability that is supported through a supplier’s APIs. In addition, building direct integrations gives us the opportunity to be first to market with any new capabilities that our partners release.

Working directly with Lufthansa Group engineers has been an incredible experience, and we look forward to developing new capabilities together that improve the traveler journey.

It’s wonderful to reflect on how far Spotnana has come since Johannes and I had our first conversations about what could be possible through the new modern infrastructure for travel Spotnana is building. I’m even more excited by the ideas we’ve yet to tackle and the innovation that’s still to come.