Fresh Details on Marriott's New Booking Tool for Small Businesses

12.07.2024 - 14:23 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Sarosh Waghmar / Drew Pinto

Marriott International has debuted a new booking platform to help small and mid-sized companies book business travel.

Skift reported the news on Tuesday but we wanted to learn more about how the tool, powered by startup Spotnana, works for road warriors.

“We think we’ve put together something really compelling here for travelers at small and medium-sized businesses who had been dissatisfied with what was out there,” said Drew Pinto, executive vice president and chief revenue and technology officer at Marriott. “We think it’s going to drive more demand to our hotels and unlock our ability to have personalized interactions with these business travelers.”

Marriott is targeting smaller companies that “self-manage” their travel because they’re too small to have the help of corporate travel managers. Employees either book travel themselves or use a personal assistant to book trips.

Marriott is betting it can lure road warriors with loyalty perks and a streamlined booking experience. Its program offers discounted rates and other benefits. Here are some key details.

Marriott created this platform for two reasons:

Small- to medium-sized businesses that join the platform will be eligible to select a discount at hotels “subject to availability,” all while earning points for future stays at participating hotels, room upgrades, and more.

Unlike any other major hotel group, Marriott now offers smaller businesses the ability to book rooms at its hotels at the same time as booking flights and rental cars in the same portal. It has built this service on top of an open platform created by startup Spotnana.

“We built a direct API integration to Marriott’s central reservation system, allowing the platform to create new offers directly to customers,” said Sarosh Waghmar, founder and chief product officer at Spotnana, to Skift. This process provides travelers with the fullest, most real-time inventory possible.

Employees must sign up for Marriott’s loyalty program to participate.

Marriott will see how the platform does with guests and prioritize new features in the travel management platform based on customer usage and requests. Here’s what else is on its product roadmap.

Marriott plans to market its new platform through both broad and direct marketing.

Marriott wants to cut out the intermediaries and capture more bookings directly.

Whether companies bite and use the new portal remains to be seen. But Marriott’s play signals the battleground is shifting in the fight for valuable business travelers.

Marriott has debuted a suite of travel tools to let road warriors book, manage, and expense business travel without having to visit third-party services.