How Navan Fixed the Multicity Flight Booking Nightmare
Booking multicity international flights typically means juggling multiple tickets, codes, and airlines. Navan, a corporate travel and expense platform that went public recently, just launched a major upgrade making these complex itineraries easy to book in one go. This overhaul isn’t about convenience alone—it’s about dismantling the underlying booking constraints that trap travelers. “We take the mental work out of the equation and leverage ticketing intelligence to deliver better pricing,” says Navan’s VP of Engineering, Ian Fette.
Conventional Tools Fail in Multicity Complexity
Most travel platforms still rely on a simple one-ticket or series-of-one-ways approach for multicity trips. This assumes airlines can cohesively manage the routes or partnerships mesh perfectly, which they rarely do. The typical fallback is multiple bookings and fragmented tickets, creating operational friction and hidden costs.
This logic ignores that the real constraint lies in the interplay between airline partnerships, price competition, and route coverage. Navan challenges this with dynamic itinerary construction, not just piecing flights together but intelligently splitting or combining tickets to optimize cost and simplicity.
It’s a rare instance where product usability is directly gated by complex market structures—proving constraint repositioning unlocks value in unexpected ways. For more on recognizing structural leverage failures in tech, see Why 2024 Tech Layoffs Actually Reveal Structural Leverage Failures.
Ticketing Intelligence: The Hidden Mechanism
Navan built new systems starting mid-2024 to automate choosing between one-ticket, multi-ticket, and hybrid itineraries across carriers. It dynamically evaluates airline partnerships versus price to fill routes efficiently with fewer tickets or cheaper split fares. This reduces operational overhead for users while maintaining or improving price competitiveness.
Unlike competitors like Ramp or Concur who largely keep legacy one-ticket or manual approaches, Navan’s engine works without human tuning for each trip. This scalable automation translates a chaotic manual task into a system with compounding advantages: the more users and data, the smarter the pricing recommendations.
Relatedly, see Why Salespeople Actually Underuse LinkedIn Profiles For Closing Deals for strategic system design that optimizes complex workflows.
Why This Changes Travel and Expense Systems
Multicity trips represent roughly 10% of Navan’s bookings but have long been a pain point. This upgrade unlocks an ongoing investment in ticketing intelligence, creating a feedback loop where better data drives better routing and pricing decisions.
By automating complexity previously borne by travelers or travel managers, Navan reduces friction, improves traveler experience, and decreases administrative burden. This constraint shift means operators can now scale complex itineraries with confidence, not hesitation.
For companies managing frequent international travel, such leverage is a competitive advantage that multiplies over time. See Enhance Operations With Process Documentation Best Practices for related operational scaling insight.
Looking Ahead: A Platform for Smarter Travel
Navan’s breakthrough marks more than a product tweak—it repositions a fundamental constraint in travel booking architecture. Future iterations will deepen use of booking data to drive even smarter pricing intelligence and partnership utilization.
Travel providers and platforms ignoring this system-level complexity risk falling behind those who automate balancing price, coverage, and ticketing simplicity. This is leverage in practice: building mechanisms that compound value without constant human intervention.
“Simplifying the hardest bookings lets us unlock pricing innovation and scale globally,” Fette notes. Operators who control these ticketing flows will control how travel expenses evolve next.
Related Tools & Resources
For companies navigating the complexities of multicity travel, having a robust communication system is crucial. Tools like Cloudtalk can streamline communication for travel teams and support functions, ensuring that every traveler is well-informed and supported throughout their journeys. Learn more about Cloudtalk →
Full Transparency: Some links in this article are affiliate partnerships. If you find value in the tools we recommend and decide to try them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend tools that align with the strategic thinking we share here. Think of it as supporting independent business analysis while discovering leverage in your own operations.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Navan improve multicity flight booking?
Navan uses ticketing intelligence to dynamically choose between one-ticket, multi-ticket, or hybrid itineraries. This optimizes cost and simplicity by evaluating airline partnerships and pricing without human tuning, reducing operational overhead.
What percentage of Navan's bookings are multicity trips?
Multicity trips represent roughly 10% of Navan's bookings, which have traditionally been difficult to manage but are now simplified by Navan's upgraded booking system.
How does Navan's approach differ from competitors like Ramp or Concur?
Unlike Ramp or Concur, which mostly rely on legacy one-ticket or manual booking methods, Navan employs automated, scalable ticketing intelligence that improves pricing and routing based on real-time data and airline partnerships.
Why is multicity flight booking traditionally challenging?
Multicity booking is challenging due to multiple tickets, airline codes, and partnerships that rarely mesh perfectly, causing fragmented tickets, operational friction, and hidden costs in conventional travel tools.
What benefits does Navan's ticketing intelligence provide?
Navan's ticketing intelligence reduces friction, improves traveler experience, lowers administrative burden, and allows travel managers to confidently scale complex itineraries while optimizing prices.
What future improvements does Navan plan for its travel platform?
Navan plans to deepen the use of booking data to enhance pricing intelligence and airline partnership utilization, further automating complexity and improving global scale and pricing innovation.
How does Navan's system handle complex airline partnerships?
The system dynamically assesses airline partnerships, price competition, and route coverage to intelligently split or combine tickets, optimizing cost and operational simplicity for multicity trips.
Why is simplifying multicity bookings a competitive advantage?
Simplifying complex bookings reduces operational costs and traveler friction, creating a compounding advantage for companies managing frequent international travel by enabling scalable, intelligent travel expense management.