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Southwest Business VP Harvey discusses:
- Features available at the portal’s launch and future plans
- Southwest plans for sustainability reporting
- Payment status of the new Wanna Get Away Plus
Southwest Airlines On August 24th, Southwest Business Assistant will launch a corporate travel portal, which will provide corporate customers with more self-service features. Southwest Business Carrier VP Dave Harvey spoke with BTN Senior Editor Donna M. Eroldi this week at the International Business Travel Association convention in San Diego to share more details on the device and what’s in store for future releases. Edited quotes follow.
BTN: What will be the biggest changes when corporate customers start using the portal?
Dave Harvey: The current process is manual. It’s a lot of picking up the phone, email – “Can you run this report? Can you send that quarterly business review? Can you pull unused funds? Duty of care?” Those are very important and critical to the relationship and the program, but they are not the most valuable interactions. They are more administrative, back office in nature. in order to, [the portal] Not only is it a big win for the business community and our customers, it’s also a huge asset for our sales team. It empowers the travel manager, so when you interact with our account team, it’s more strategic.
[Travel buyers] He has told us for years that we need this platform. After finding [global distribution systems] Turns out, that was the next big thing we had to bring to market. Many of these international programs have thousands of travelers using Southwest in a variety of ways—through Swabiz, through our direct connections, through GDS. This will be the single source of truth. No matter what channel is used, you can see that entire business with Southwest.
BTN: What did you learn from beta testing the tool?
Harvey: We have three influential boards. One is b [travel management company] Community, one is for large buyers on the corporate side, then we have the business of higher education. About 60 accounts got access to the beta release in May, just hoping to get that real-time feedback. They loved it and wanted more talent quickly. They helped us by prioritizing the launch. [Aug. 24]And we’re planning another small release this fall and another big release in the first quarter. We continue to add bells and whistles for talent.
There were some reports and dashboards, “I really want this piece of data” or “I want to organize it this way.” I would say a nice tweak to help the navigation and usability of the device. One of the most satisfying things is that we are the first airline supplier to launch on Salesforce Experience Cloud. Even for our beta release, it’s very popular and from usage, we’ve received feedback that it’s the best tool on the market.
[Travel buyers] He has told us for years that we need this platform. After we turned on the GDS, that was the next big thing we had to bring to market.
BTN: Durability is one of the features addressed for the first release.
Harvey: There is an ongoing need and desire to better understand the carbon footprint. It wasn’t in the original plan to go live next Wednesday, but we were able to pull in some of the capabilities to request your metrics and sustainability report and have them fulfilled through the portal.
BTN: So you are automating the query and not the immediate delivery of the report?
Harvey: It will be very easy for you to make that request and for us to fulfill it. They go to the account manager and say, ‘Did you see my note? When are you going to change this for me?’ We have service level agreements where we want to change this quickly. Think of it as a clearinghouse for all these questions. … We can turn it on in a day or two.
[Editor’s Note: Since Harvey spoke with BTN, Southwest shared that not only
will users be able to request sustainability reports through the portal, but
that they also will be automated for the release on Aug. 24.]
The portal describes the performance of all dashboards linked to your contracts. It is flexible. You can see all your history and all your flights in real time, and [whether you are] On the road or off the track. There is a lot of education and communication in our portal. It is standard practice to receive a quarterly business review with all our accounts. Today, that’s PowerPoint, and I’m sending you an email. Maybe you saved it or maybe you didn’t. When we sign a contract, we have a travel agreement. Maybe you keep it, maybe you don’t. Now you have it all there in the portal. There is still some manual filling in this release. Future releases will be more automated and allow the user to have it right there on demand.
[Editor’s Note: According to Southwest, items that will be automated on
Aug. 24 in addition to the sustainability report include A-list upgrades, UATP
enrollment and UATP flight credit conversions. Future releases are slated to
include status matches and refund requests, though the company is working to
automate this function.]
BTN: You have already noted that mandatory-care reporting will be automated in future releases as well as qualifying flight credits.
Harvey: It is to control the transmission of the future release. [New fare] Wanna Get Away Plus is doing great. It is very business friendly. And travel credits don’t expire now. … The portal gives you visibility and better management of all those transactions when you want to get those credits back, when you actually want to transfer them.
BTN: Are you seeing the Wanna Get Away Plus payment ordered through Southwest Business? Which class is currently booked?
Harvey: We don’t share that breakdown. [but] We are getting strong adoption. Since it is a new product, there are many conversations with travel managers. On the other hand, a lot of our distribution and channel partners, with online booking tools, want to make sure it’s being viewed the right way and they’ve removed all that friction. Then you have the management part that we talked about. … It’s not just about forwarding, it’s about same-day-guaranteed turnaround and same-day standby. Especially in markets like Texas and California where we get that short turnaround time, the same-day guaranteed turnaround is huge.
BTN: Early-Bird Check-in is optional when booking on both Travelport and Amadeus. When will Saber be available?
Harvey: The work is basically done. We are finalizing the testing, and expect to release it by the end of September.
BTN: The release also noted partnerships with ATPCO Express Contracts and Routehappy Services. How do you change the customer experience?
Harvey: [For Express Contracts], think of it as the customer relationship management side of our business. Once we close a deal with a buyer, it’s typically another manual process, and we’re streamlining and automating it. Sometimes it can take a week or two before we start submitting rates with offers associated with them. Now, that can be done in literally a few minutes. It’s a synergy between our team and our revenue management team, who do all the tariff documentation and collaborate with us. We can cut the deal and file your tariff today.
On Routehappy, there are other rich content clearing house providers but [it] It is becoming the standard. If you’re looking for images, pictures of our four products, Wanna Get Away, Wanna Get Away Plus, Choose Anytime and Business, and many online booking tools as well as GDSs that describe all the features and benefits, source all content from Routehappy. We had some solutions to get that content, now we’re going to be the industry standard. If we ever make changes, we can upload it to Routehappy and then everyone can eat it.
There are still a lot of travel consultants, TMCs, and travel groups that haven’t flown a lot on Southwest, so they’re not educated on our product. You really want to showcase and display your products in a rich way, and this will be a great way to get it up to speed.
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