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Earlier today, Rearden Commerce (click here to see our recent commentary on this unique provider you should know about if you don’t already: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) announced it was teaming with Southwest Airlines to expose “direct access to Southwest fares and schedules,” within its Commerce Platform. The result, they suggest, will “simplify the reservation process for travelers” and will help consolidate “reporting efforts for travel and procurement” on the back-end. Under the agreement, there will be type of travel punch-out to Southwest’s site required.
Rearden suggests that when “a traveler books a Southwest flight, they will go through the same” single screen (desktop or mobile) as usual. Moreover, the Rearden platform will enable them to “automatically populate their Outlook or Lotus Notes calendars with Southwest bookings, receive timely and up to the minute flight and gate status to their devices … [and to also] track and apply unused funds.” In addition, Southwest will show “live availability and last seat inventory” and much of the same capability on the Southwest business booking site already available today including the ability to support deferred ticketing, canceling reservations, retrieving reservations and “exchanging funds towards the purchase of new itineraries.”
For those outside the travel procurement business, this might not sounds like an important announcement, but it is for a number of reasons. For one, Southwest has traditionally tried to practice disintermediation in terms of traditional travel sites and intermediaries from its own booking tools, preferring to drive business travelers to its own portal…
In some cases, people are so exhausted in times of travel reservations. Some companies have complicated flight reservations which can cause customers not to continue on their reservations.