Building the Future of Hotel Retailing with Hilton

At Navan, we’ve always believed that great business travel starts with great content. But accessing content alone isn’t enough. The real unlock is bringing the best content into an experience that is simple, reliable, and useful for travelers and travel program leaders.

That’s especially true in lodging.

A hotel booking is not just a rate on a screen. It’s the room type, the location, the amenities, the bed type, the cancellation policy, the loyalty benefits, the payment experience, and what actually happens when the traveler gets to the property. Hotels are inherently experiential, and the technology behind corporate hotel booking needs to reflect that.

That’s why we are so excited to announce an industry-first hotel–TMC direct connection with Hilton, co-created to bring richer content, real-time booking, and more modern retailing to corporate hotel travel.

As the first TMC to integrate directly with Hilton’s Central Reservation System and content services, Navan is pairing Hilton’s next-generation distribution framework with our travel marketplace and booking platform.

The goal is simple: give travelers more confidence when they shop, book, and stay.

Building on our multi-source content strategy

With the scale of our content platform, we’ve faced lodging data consistency challenges that others don’t. Hotel content comes from many places, and room names, photos, amenities, policies, and rates can vary dramatically across sources. That creates confusion for travelers and extra work for travel teams.

Navan’s hotel marketplace includes more than 2.6 million properties worldwide, with content from GDS partners, including Sabre and Amadeus; online travel agencies, including Expedia, Booking.com, Priceline, and MakeMyTrip; and direct connections with brands including Wyndham, Travelodge UK, and Premier Inn.

That breadth matters. No single source can meet every need for every traveler, customer, supplier, or trip. The future of corporate travel retailing is multi-source, and our job is to bring together the best content from across the ecosystem and make the complexity invisible to the user.

Earlier this year, we launched our new AI-powered hotel content catalog to help do exactly that. It acts as a universal smart filter for lodging content, cleaning up millions of listings from across the industry and turning messy, duplicated room data into clearer, more accurate options. No more detective work. No more endless duplicate listings. Just more confidence when you book. Our job is to bring together the best content from across the ecosystem — direct supplier connections, GDS partners, OTA content, and more — and make the complexity invisible to the user.

The Hilton direct connection builds on that foundation. It gives Navan access to authoritative Hilton content directly from the source of truth, including live rates, availability, and rich property details. That means travelers can better understand what they are booking and what to expect when they arrive.

Moving toward modern hotel retailing

We’re past the point where hotel shopping should be limited to static rates and basic room descriptions. Travelers need richer context. Travel managers need more reliable information. Suppliers need better ways to represent their products. And AI needs structured, high-quality content to make smarter recommendations.

That is where modern hotel retailing comes in.

Direct connectivity creates the opportunity to lean further into attribute-based shopping — helping travelers understand the specific features and experiences that matter to them, from room attributes and amenities to policies, loyalty eligibility, and location context.

This matters even more as AI becomes a bigger part of the booking experience.

Earlier this year, we introduced “Book with AI”, which lets travelers book trips through a simple conversation. A prompt like, “I need to be in London next Tuesday for a three-day meeting,” can instantly surface personalized, policy-compliant options from Navan’s global inventory, along with helpful context about neighborhoods, properties, room types, and local events.

Experiences like this are only as strong as the infrastructure underneath them. If AI is going to act as a true travel advisor, it needs accurate content, rich context, and reliable fulfillment. Our rebuilt hotel catalog, our investment in AI-powered booking, and direct connections like the one we’re building with Hilton are all part of the same strategy: making business travel easier, smarter, and more connected.

Better for travelers, better for programs

The value of this work does not stop at shopping and booking.

Corporate hotel programs also need to work operationally. Payment, settlement, servicing, reconciliation, and support all shape the experience. Anyone who has managed a travel program knows that hotel payment friction can create unnecessary noise — for travelers at check-in, for travel managers handling escalations, and for finance teams reconciling spend after the trip.

By working directly with Hilton, Navan can help enable more consistent virtual payment acceptance across Hilton’s global portfolio. That means fewer front-desk payment issues for travelers, less manual overhead for travel teams, and a stronger technical foundation for future backend automation and post-booking integrations.

This is the bigger opportunity with direct connectivity. It’s not just about displaying more content. It’s about improving the full journey — search, booking, payment, stay, and expense — so the program works better end to end.

Building the future with partners

We’re proud to work with Hilton on this industry-first connection. It reflects what is possible when two industry innovators build intentionally for the end user.

At Navan, we’ll continue to invest in a multi-source marketplace, modern distribution, AI-powered booking, and the infrastructure needed to make travel feel simple on the front end — even when the back end is incredibly complex.

Hotels are where business travelers rest, prepare, meet, and recharge. They are a deeply human part of the trip. Our job is to make sure the technology behind that experience is just as thoughtful.

With Hilton, we’re taking another meaningful step toward that future.