Travel tech company Snowfall has launched booking platform Junction
One following the acquisition of cash-strapped PSNGR1 last year.
The company stepped in to rescue the widely praised but struggling
online booking tool last summer and has since spent time developing and rebranding
the tool.
It is available to TMCs and corporates and is powered by
Snowfall’s proprietary open API global distribution system, Junction, which
includes NDC content.
Junction One retains much of PSNGR1’s appearance and
functionality including its “intuitive storefront”, says the company, as well as the TripBoards feature which
enables users to collaboratively plan and book trips with colleagues, guests
and friends and family.
“This is not purely a rebranding exercise,” Snowfall founder and chief executive Stefan Cars told BTN Europe. “The PSNGR1 technology now forms the backbone of Snowfall’s next-gen booking tool, Junction One. Together with Junction Go multimodal capability, the tool offers all agency and corporate travel needs in one tool, and we are moving towards the future of travel booking and management – one search, one booking, one payment.”
Cars continued: “We had come quite far with our own roadmap when the PSNGR1 opportunity came to light. The tool and the company had been on our radar for a while... and we were big admirers of its user experience and TripBoards functionality. When PSNGR1 paused its operations, we quickly explored the opportunity to integrate its IP and experienced team, while leapfrogging our own development.”
Partnerships with several TMCs that were signed under PSNGR1’s
previous ownership have been “extended and deepened”, including deals with the UK’s Gray
Dawes Group and Blue Cube Travel, transatlantic agency TakeTwo and US-based
TravelStore, as well as the Focus Travel Partnership.
Cars confirmed PSNGR1 founder Chris Moss is no longer involved with the company but “almost all” other staff moved across to join Snowfall.
Snowfall says that its Junction hub delivers “end-to-end
multimodal travel” – including air, hotel, rail, ferry, ride hailing and public
transport content – and incorporates it in a single booking. It aggregates disparate content as well as working with partners including legacy GDSs. NDC content is sourced via both API connections and aggregators.
“Junction’s content is much vaster than the legacy GDSs,” said Cars. “Our belief is that all travel and experience-related content should be available through one unified API or workflow tool.”
While Junction One can be used as a standalone booking tool with content sourced from a variety of channels, Cars said it is best deployed with the wider Junction ecosystem “in order to leverage its full functionality and most powerful features”.
The tool is a white label product, he added, because “in the majority of cases our customers want to adapt and integrate the look and feel”.
The company’s tech suite also includes automated traveller
assistance and disruption management through Junction Plus and B2B payments
solutions Junction Pay.
BTN Europe broke the news last June that US-based PSNGR1 had
told customers current activity would be paused amid a funding shortfall and
that all employment had been “frozen” at the end of May. None of its UK-based
partner TMCs had at that time implemented the tool for any clients.
In August, Cars told BTN Europe that Snowfall
was “putting the final pieces in place” to acquire PSNGR1. “We’ve been very
interested in what they’re producing and we think it’s a great product. From a
continuity perspective, the platform will look the same and we’re going to be
integrating people and staff as one company,” said Cars at the time.