A look at our partnership with Spotnana and the early signs that we made the right call to invest in a modern business travel platform.

Ninety-four percent. That’s the average self-service online booking rate across JTB Business Travel’s Teal Premier clients, according to a newly published Spotnana case study. For years, business Travelers have been trying to tell the industry what they want from a modern business travel platform. Most travel management companies haven’t delivered.

But when you see a number like 94%, it’s clear that something has shifted.

In 2025, we made the decision to pair modern, cloud-based infrastructure with the high-touch service JTB Business Travel has been known for over 114 years. While making the decision, we also recognized that we couldn’t do it on our own.

The need for the right partner led us to Spotnana and its Cloud for TMCs. The end result was Teal, the technology foundation that we use to serve different segments of the business travel market. JTB Business Travel was the first TMC to offer Spotnana across owned points of sale in more than 20 countries. We were glad to be early, and we aren’t waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up.

Here’s how the decision has played out so far.

The Challenges Teal Was Designed to Solve

Modernizing infrastructure is always expensive and disruptive, and it forces hard conversations across every part of the business. We took on the challenge because the alternative was watching the gap keep widening between what business Travelers wanted and what we could give them.

Three specific pressures made the case for change.

The first was content. Across the industry, but especially in Europe, low-cost carriers and direct airline content increasingly sit outside traditional GDS channels. That fragmentation made it harder to give clients a single, trustworthy view of what was available. It also made it harder for our Travel Advisors to service trips without bouncing between systems.

The second was the booking experience itself. Clients were asking for something that felt closer to what they use as consumers, but most legacy tools weren’t even close. The longer we waited, the more our Travelers would be tempted to route outside their corporate booking tool.

The third was operational. Travel Advisor staffing and labor costs are difficult to scale alongside ambitious growth goals. We needed technology that could absorb routine work so our Advisors could focus on the trips and moments where their expertise actually matters.

All TMCs are facing these pressures, but few are addressing them head-on. We decided to move forward because we saw incredible long-term value for our customers.

“We evaluated multiple technologies, but Spotnana fit the mold best,” Geert de Boo, Vice President of Global Business Travel at JTB Business Travel, said in the case study. “The way it’s set up gives us flexibility for the future, knowing that what we need today may be different tomorrow.”

The 3 Benefits of Our Modern Infrastructure

In a category where adoption rates for corporate booking tools have historically been a source of frustration, 94% is eye-opening. It means our Travelers are using the tool we gave them rather than booking on consumer sites and expensing it later. In short, 94% means the platform is doing its job (and then some).

In the months following Teal Premier’s launch, we migrated several hundred accounts onto the platform. Adoption climbed quickly across that group, but adoption is only one piece of the picture. The case study points to three other shifts that matter just as much:

1. Implementation speed: Rolling out a multi-country travel program used to be a drawn-out project. Spotnana’s cloud-native platform compressed those legacy timelines. “We were surprised by how much faster we can do it,” Geert said in the case study. “The first couple of months with a new account are critical. When we can make that a much easier process, that’s a huge win.”
   
2. A shared view for Advisors and Travelers: Our Travel Advisors now work in the same platform our clients see, with NDC, LCC, and rail content all in one place. That means less time switching between tools and more time on the work that actually moves a trip forward.
   
3. Time reallocation: With routine requests automated, our Advisors are freed up for the complex itineraries, international programs, and disrupted-trip moments where human support actually moves the needle. The most experienced people in our company can spend their time on the work that demands their experience.

The common theme across all of this comes back to a point Geert made in the case study: “It’s much more than just an online booking tool. It’s a different operating system for travel that delivers better efficiency and automates more processes.”

A Business Travel Solution for Any Company

The mid-market has historically been underserved when it comes to travel management technology. These organizations want enterprise-grade tech with real policy controls, reporting, and global content — but they also want the service quality associated with a high-touch TMC. Traditionally, they’ve had to choose between one or the other.

Teal Premier bridges that gap. It’s one of three options we now offer, each built around a different approach to managing business travel:

• Teal Premier for global programs that need customization, policy depth, and global rollout.
  
• Teal Essential for organizations with self-managed travel programs that want a modern, ready-to-use platform without a long implementation.
  
• Preferred for organizations where high-touch, Advisor-led service is the priority.

While these are three different offerings, they share the underlying belief that any company should run its travel program in the way that’s best for it. For too long, many businesses were forced to adapt to travel technology rather than implement tech that could adapt to the business.

Why We Picked a Partner (Not Just a Platform)

When we started evaluating modern travel platforms, we were looking for a company that would build with us, not hand us a finished product and walk away.

That distinction matters. The travel industry is moving fast enough that any platform we picked would need to evolve. We wanted a partner whose roadmap we could shape, and one who would actually listen to our vision and feedback.

Spotnana has been that partner. Before Teal Premier scaled, our operations team got hands-on experience with the Spotnana platform by servicing customers of Goodwings, a sustainability-focused booking platform built on Spotnana’s open architecture. That work gave our Advisors a deep familiarity with the technology and made the broader Teal migration smoother when it came.

“Spotnana has been a great partner,” Geert said. “We feel listened to, and I think it makes both of us better. We’re trying to pioneer together. When we encounter difficulties, we fix them together.”

Where We Go From Here

Asia is the next priority for Teal Premier expansion. Several key markets are already in motion, and there’s a meaningful opportunity to bring the same combination of modern technology and high-touch service to clients in the region where our company started more than a century ago.

The ultimate goal is to become a credible alternative to the largest TMCs in the global market. But, with Teal Premier in place alongside our traditional travel management services, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish for our customers—no matter their size.

Learn more about the journey that led us to Teal by reading the Spotnana case study. Want to see Teal in action? Get in touch with our team.

Ownership Notice: Northstar Travel Group is a JTB Corp company. JTB Business Travel may reference reporting or research published by Northstar; however, all commentary and recommendations in this article are independently developed.