Navan has unveiled a major upgrade to its business travel platform with a new multi-city booking experience designed to remove one of the industry’s biggest digital pain points: planning and ticketing complex itineraries without the help of a human agent.
Announced on Tuesday, the new system brings the simplicity of a round-trip search to itineraries with multiple stops, solving what Navan describes as one of travel technology’s hardest engineering challenges. Traditional online booking tools struggle with the exponential rise in route and fare combinations that occur each time an additional city is added, often forcing business travellers to book manually over phone or email, driving up costs and reducing policy compliance.
Navan’s rebuilt engine uses advanced algorithms and modern content sources such as NDC to ingest thousands of variables and deliver faster, more accurate results. It breaks down fare details leg-by-leg, handles multi-ticket checkouts across multiple carriers, and keeps the rest of an itinerary intact even if one segment fails to ticket — a long-standing frustration with legacy systems.
“We spent years refining our one-way and round-trip booking flows until they were intuitive, fast and beautiful,” said Ian Fette, Navan’s vice-president of engineering. “Multi-city booking is one of the hardest engineering challenges in travel, which is why legacy T&E platforms haven’t been able to offer it. We rebuilt our multi-city engine from the ground up, aiming to make booking a five-leg international trip as straightforward as a one-way flight home.”
Navan says the new system provides the equivalent expertise of a seasoned human agent embedded in software, offering:
A unified, intuitive interface
The design mirrors Navan’s existing one-way and round-trip flows, eliminating the learning curve and helping travellers navigate multi-leg routes with confidence.
Transparent fare comparisons
Users can compare fare types, see amenities at a glance and mix cabin classes across legs — such as business class for long-haul segments and economy for shorter hops — with full visibility on price trade-offs.
Expanded inventory and better prices
By integrating NDC content, the system surfaces routes and pricing combinations that older tools cannot display, giving companies access to improved availability and reduced fares.
Smarter, resilient ticketing
Navan’s revamped checkout supports multiple bookings in a single transaction. If one flight fails to ticket, the rest of the trip can still be issued, allowing the traveller or travel manager to adjust only the problem segment.
The upgrade is now live for Navan’s global business travel customers, with further enhancements coming in 2026. These include AI-powered optimisation that will automatically propose route combinations designed to minimise cost and maximise traveller comfort, as well as contextual guidance drawn from Navan’s top multi-city travel agents.
The launch represents a significant step in the company’s ambition to automate the most complex areas of corporate travel management — traditionally the domain of specialist travel consultants — and make high-complexity bookings as seamless as the simplest trips.