Southwest Airlines’ SWABIZ: The Corporate Travel Booking Tool [2023]

Southwest Airlines has a little-known feature for businesses called SWABIZ. SWABIZ is not a reward or loyalty program — rather, it’s an auxiliary booking interface designed for business and corporate travelers. It serves as a one-stop shop for booking Southwest flights, hotel stays, and car rentals.

So, if you see you and your employees are booking a ton of travel with Southwest, using SWABIZ can save you a ton of headache and time in the long run.

Let’s take a look at SWABIZ in detail and see why businesses enjoy using it to plan corporate travel!

The Pros and Cons of Southwest Airlines SWABIZ

SWABIZ promises to make business travel management easier through a state-of-the-art interface to book Southwest flights, hotels via a partnership with Booking.com, and rental cars from major companies like Avis, Budget, and Hertz.

One of the biggest selling points of SWABIZ is that you can get access to exclusive business travel offers.

You can also add travel managers who can book on behalf of other travelers. You can even add ghost cards, which allow travelers to make bookings using a credit card without knowing the actual card details (card number, security code, etc.).

As to be expected, there are no fees required to use this platform, including its robust reporting capabilities.

Furthermore, one of the neat features of SWABIZ is that you get internal reference numbers, which are unique identifiers you can use to attribute to cost centers to identify the nature of the travel, and can even pull reports based on these IRNs.

With the Southwest mobile app, you can book flights with your SWABIZ account and make changes to bookings made on SWABIZ, too.

Delta has SkyBonus points in addition to SkyMiles, United has PlusPerks points in addition to MileagePlus miles, and American Airlines has Business Extra points in addition to AAdvantage miles, but the main drawback of SWABIZ is that it doesn’t offer a separate rewards currency in addition to its core frequent flyer program. Southwest has a different business rewards program known as Rapid Rewards Business (requiring a SWABIZ account), which is how businesses can double-dip in a frequent flyer program and a corporate rewards program at Southwest.

The other drawback of SWABIZ is that it really only helps if you do all of your business travel on Southwest Airlines. If, for example, you need to book a United flight or an alliance flight for your business, you’re out of luck.

How To Enroll in Southwest Airlines SWABIZ

The process to sign-up is straightforward; simply fill out the online form to enroll in SWABIZ.

You’ll be asked to enter your company’s contact information, provide some details about your company, and nominate a travel manager (or multiple).

Pretty easy, right?

Reasons To Use Southwest Airlines SWABIZ

So you might be wondering, why would you want to use SWABIZ for planning travel if you don’t get any rewards out of it?

Well, to start, you have to understand that SWABIZ is a platform and not a loyalty program. The whole value proposition of SWABIZ is convenience and easy access to enterprise-level reporting.

The first major benefit is that all of your flights are eligible for a 36-hour EarlyBird Check-In instead of the normal 24-hour check-in when you purchase this benefit.

The second major benefit of SWABIZ is that you can assign certain people specific roles. These include:

• Full-Access Travel Managers, who can book reservations on behalf of guests and registered travelers, run reports, manage ghost cards, add or remove travel managers, generate reports, manage travel policies, and more
• Limited-Access Travel Managers, who can book reservations on behalf of guests and registered travelers
• Travelers, who can use their traveler account to book travel using a company’s SWABIZ ID and save time during the booking process
• Guests, who are infrequent travelers who don’t need a registered traveler account

Beyond that, the SWABIZ platform is capable of generating sophisticated reporting with thoughtfully-designed filtering capabilities.

One of the best aspects of SWABIZ is that you can also easily book group rates for 10 or more travelers, which come with unlimited name changes (up to 72 hours prior to departure) and no upfront payment required (except a $50 deposit per person in some cases).

You’ll generally also get a dedicated Southwest account manager to help assist you in travel management, as well as flight discounts and personalized trip planning.

Final Thoughts

SWABIZ is not the right program for value-seekers. It is primarily a booking tool for businesses to use for travel management, not for loyalty rewards.

Southwest’s business loyalty program, on the other hand, is called Rapid Rewards Business. This program is similar to what other airlines offer, like Delta SkyBonus, American Airlines Business Extra, Alaska Airlines’ EasyBiz, and United PerksPlus.

SWABIZ offers a booking interface that companies and employees can use to book business travel itineraries under 1 roof. Keep in mind that this is limited only to Southwest flights, hotels via Booking.com, and car rentals (from all the major players in the industry).

With SWABIZ, you can access hotel deals, expense tracking, and enhanced EarlyBird Check-In perks (assuming you purchase EarlyBird Check-Ins). Lastly, you can get internal reference numbers (IRNs) and ghost cards, which make business travel more secure and optimizes reporting capabilities.