AI is the trend that will lead in shaping the future of travel sourcing, according to a survey of travel buyers from BCD Travel. However, a large majority of the 132 respondents (43% from North America and about a third from Europe) said they are not yet leveraging the technology in their own programs.

More than two-fifths (42%) said that while they are not yet using AI in sourcing, they are exploring options around the technology. Also, just under 40% of buyer respondents said they are not using AI in sourcing and didn’t indicate that they are planning to do so.

Other trends buyers identified as the biggest shapers of the future of sourcing include multiyear supplier agreements (46%) and a shift toward dynamic pricing and continuous sourcing (45%).

Cost control was far and away the highest priority for buyers in sourcing, according to the survey, with  86% of buyers in the survey identifying it as one of the top three priorities of their travel team’s sourcing strategy, nearly 50 percentage points higher than the next-highest options, including collecting quality data from suppliers (38%), contract compliance (36%) and reducing supplier count for better leverage (31%). Pricing also topped the list of sourcing challenges for buyers, with 45% saying high costs and 41% saying rate fluctuations were among their top three sourcing challenges.