Multicity flights are a mess. Navan says it finally fixed them

Consider this: You want to book a multicity, international trip with flights from New York City to London, then Paris, and then back to New York City. There are numerous variables in the mix—different airlines, various ticketing levels, and more—that make the booking more complicated than anticipated. Accordingly, you may end up booking several separate flights, with multiple tickets and confirmation codes to keep track of. 

If you travel a lot, that can be a lot to manage. But Navan, a corporate travel and expense platform, says it has smoothed the whole process out for booking flights.

Navan—which went public less than a month and a half ago, and mainly competes in the same space as companies such as Ramp and Concur—announced on Wednesday that it has unveiled a huge upgrade to its multicity booking process, making it easier than ever to book complex travel itineraries. That’s something that amounts to a rather large engineering breakthrough, its team says. While users previously could use Navan for exactly these types of complicated, multicity bookings, doing so, following the upgrades, is now much simpler.

These types of itineraries amount to “around 10% of bookings” on the platform, says Ian Fette, vice president of Engineering at Navan, but “it wasn’t the feature that got all the attention and love.” However, the process has been “massively upgraded,” he says, although it took some time. Navan started working on the improved process during the second half of 2024.

And, as noted, it’s the myriad variables that come into play when booking multicity trips that made it such a daunting task for engineers.

“What’s hard about multicity [itineraries]is not all airlines can handle all the itineraries you can throw at them,” Fette says. “Some airlines have partnerships and can sell one ticket that covers the whole journey, or you can construct itineraries where one airline can fulfill all the routes,” he continues, “but it may not be price competitive—we try to break it up and see if we can fill it as one ticket, and get a good price.”

Previously, balancing simplicity and pricing for multicity bookings has been the goal for travelers, and it generally involved a one-ticket approach (comprising all flights) or a series of one-way flights. Navan’s upgraded system spares travelers from “trying to do all that mental work of trying to put it together.”

Fette says users are already lauding the changes, and that the upgrades lay the foundation for future enhancements to the Navan platform. “This unlocks our ability to continue to iterate our ticketing intelligence—how we use the knowledge and data we have to drive you to the best pricing,” he says. “This is an ongoing area of investment for us, and it’s a huge step up.”

source https://www.fastcompany.com/91457429/narvan-multi-city-flights