Building a robust travel program that saves time and reduces costs

Dottid offers an all-in-one commercial real estate (CRE) asset management platform that brings together leasing, CapEx, valuation, and debt in one place. Since Dottid’s founding in 2018, they have quickly scaled their teams. In turn, their employees have attended more conferences to share their perspectives with the larger commercial real estate industry. As travel increased at Dottid, it became cumbersome to coordinate changing flights, switching attendees, and booking multiple rooms at a time.

Carson Yeager, Director of Strategy and Operations at Dottid, needed a travel solution with the ability to provide expanded visibility into bookings, trips, and payments. When Yeager discovered Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service Platform, he was impressed by Spotnana’s easy-to-use suite of business travel management tools including policy management and real-time analytics. 

For Yeager, these tools have greatly reduced the amount of administrative time that he needs to set aside each month. “As someone in a leadership position who is managing people going on trips at different times, having an overarching view of what is happening is very valuable,” said Yeager. “If someone asks when an employee is traveling at a given point in the future, I am able to quickly view the flights they have booked, the hotels they are staying at, and the payment method that they used. My administrative responsibilities within Spotnana only require an hour per month of time.”

Yeager was also impressed that Spotnana did not require fees for deployment, annual subscriptions, cancellations, or contacting travel agents for assistance. “We fell in love with Spotnana’s advantageous pricing model,” said Yeager. “The flat fee for each trip was very attractive to us.”

Yeager found onboarding new travelers to be a simple process requiring minimal work on his end. “Deployment only took a week, onboarding was very helpful, and I found it easy to get new travelers onto the platform,” said Yeager. “It took an hour to fill out the initial list of users. The internal comms that were provided were very helpful for me to roll out to our leadership team.”

Simplifying the booking and servicing processes

Annually, remote Dottid employees travel to Dallas for the company’s in-person all-hands. “We knew that we were going to need to bring all of our remote employees to Dallas,” said Yeager. “Coordinating everything from regional flights to trip changes was a considerable challenge before Spotnana.”

With Spotnana, Yeager coordinated a variety of trips originating at regional and national airports across the United States. Spotnana enables employees to use a company card for travel bookings, and all expenses flow seamlessly through to Expensify.

“We had people fly in from New York, California, and other states with large and small carriers,” said Yeager. “I was able to add everybody to Spotnana and grant access to the company card. I never had to worry about out-of-policy bookings.”

When managing travel for Dottid’s all-hands and other events, Yeager appreciates the support provided by Spotnana’s agents who offer immediate, 24/7 global service at no additional cost.

“Spotnana’s travel agents have been incredible,” said Yeager. “We’ve had multiple flights canceled and changed as a result of bad weather. When we reach out to agents for assistance, they respond within a minute and quickly resolve the case by making changes for us. It takes the lift off of the traveler and us.”

Delivering value with Spotnana’s American Airlines NDC integration

Spotnana is built from the ground up to deliver unparalleled experiences to business travelers. This includes providing access to comprehensive travel inventory and competitive price points through direct NDC connections with top airlines.

“Being in Dallas, we fly American Airlines all the time,” said Yeager. “The ability to edit and change flights on the platform without having to go to a supplier website or chat with support has been incredibly valuable.”

Yeager and his travelers enjoy accumulating points for Dottid and for themselves when they travel for business. “Spotnana helped us set up our American Airlines business account,” said Yeager. “We are leveraging the points and benefits on the company side, and individual travelers earn their own rewards when they travel. It’s been very smooth.”

As Dottid continues to add more travelers, expand visibility into its travel program, and reduce costs, Yeager knows his travelers will be supported whether they travel by air, rail, or car.