Advances in artificial intelligence are stirring headlines and hope among travel management companies looking at technology solutions to offer a better business travel experience. Still, the hype may be leading some companies to over-promise and under-deliver.
The travel industry is one of the most impactful use cases for AI and it’s already widely adopted in the leisure space. For corporate travel, it especially holds tremendous promise for global TMCs who have the challenge of working with fragmented supporting technologies across markets.
“Companies in the travel industry have been working with AI for several years now, and the pace of progress has been rapid,” says Gordon Coale, senior director and head of enterprise architecture at CWT. “We are seeing increasingly sophisticated use cases of AI in travel, where ensembles of technologies are being used to enhance or automate traditionally human-executed tasks. One could say that AI in travel is starting to pass the infamous Turing test, where users might be unaware if they are dealing with human or computer.”
The entire travel industry has faced serious staffing challenges, and a big strain is placed on TMCs and suppliers when reduced workforce is coupled with greater demand for urgent support. So, AI is being utilized with machine learning and automation to support travelers more proactively, with tools that have been enhanced to offer relevant destination insights, communication options for when something goes wrong, and self-service capabilities that let business travelers feel more control of their trip.
AI applications that are already improving the traveler experience today include facial recognition and biometrics to speed up airport check-in and immigration processes, more relevant and personalized search results in booking tools, quicker support with chatbots and messaging, and tools to predict trip disruptions.
Joel Bailey, chief technology officer North America at CTM, says as we step into 2024, AI technologies such as large language models, machine learning, and robotic process automation will begin to reshape the business travel landscape.
“These advancements are enhancing online booking tools and global distribution systems and introducing AI-powered customer service platforms, fundamentally altering how we plan, book, manage, and experience business trips,” he says. “Notably, AI is enabling the creation of (hyper)personalized travel itineraries that reflect individual preferences and corporate policies. Also noteworthy is AI’s role in enhancing search efficiency and accuracy in systems like Sabre, offering improved fare predictions and streamlined booking processes.”
Since the launch of ChatGPT late last year, generative artificial intelligence – or GenAI for short – has captured everyone’s interest. “GenAI algorithms can be used to provide personalized travel recommendations by analyzing vast amounts of data, including user preferences and historical travel patterns,” Coale says. “Creating realistic and immersive virtual travel experiences could allow travelers to explore destinations and better understand what to expect on their journey before leaving home. Meanwhile, powerful language translation and localization systems can bridge communication gaps and foster deeper connections.”
Yannis Karmis, senior vice president, product planning and development for BCD Travel, notes increasing the use of AI throughout the digital travel experience will provide a more efficient, personalized experience for travelers. “AI allows us to automate low value tasks currently managed by agents, freeing up more time for them to manage high impact service and support issues,” he explains. “It has the potential to remove many of the existing friction points from the journey whether that be the planning or booking process, service and support, or even the expense process, providing travelers with the modern digital experience they’ve come to expect.”
AI In Practice
The concept of AI is not new to travel technology. For instance, BCD Travel has been leveraging artificial intelligence technology for several years across its platforms. Some examples include matching transactions and credit card data within its spend management platform, room and bed type matching in its travel commerce platform, and mapping traffic and shopping patterns in price assurance technology.
“BCD continues to conduct AI trials across the business, measuring outcomes and prioritizing use cases,” Karmis says. “Our assessment at the current time points to agent technology/productivity as the priority for AI that would provide the most return for our clients and their travelers, e.g., chat robotics and e-mail automation.”
AI-driven innovations are making significant strides, reshaping how corporate trips are planned, managed and experienced. Bailey points to CTM’s Lightning, for example, as enhancing the booking process through AI-driven personalization.
“By analyzing corporate policy, traveler preferences and past behaviors, these platforms offer tailored recommendations, aligning seamlessly with individual needs and corporate policies,” he says. “CTM embraces AI in our intelligent service approach, leveraging solutions in our Lightning online booking tool, CTM Scout chatbot, and our agent service platform, CTM Advisor. These systems automate redundant processes and enhance personalization for the user while optimizing our operational efficiency.”
Tom Kershaw, chief product and technology officer at Travelport, notes that his company has been using data and machine learning to enhance its search and serving capabilities for years.
“What is new is generative AI, which adds human language and learning to the mix, and that will eventually have a huge impact on how travelers interact with technology, giving them more options and making the entire process faster,” he says. “From the first search, while on the journey and all the way to post-trip reporting, AI advancements will enable more convenience for business travelers to streamline tasks that were previously time-consuming.”
CWT has been working extensively with AI for more than five years across several areas. For instance, the company’s Intelligent Display solutions use AI to make more relevant offers to travelers based on their preferences and past choices, while suggesting the most cost-effective, in-policy options.
“We have also been automating tasks to increase the productivity of our travel counselors – for example, by using AI to detect the intent of inbound e-mails so these can be managed more efficiently,” Coale says. “Another application has been in predicting travel demand in near real-time through our partnership with ZYTLYN, to be even more intuitive in our customer offer.”
The company has also been working with GenAI and large language models since the start of 2023. In July 2023, it completed a worldwide hackathon across its operations and technology teams where it brainstormed 110 ideas, prototyped 25 of them in 12 hours, and found several for productization.
“We’re confident that after extensive research and exploration we’re at a stage where we can incorporate GenAI capabilities into our products and solutions,” Coale says. “We have agreed to a partnership with a leading supplier of GenAI and are actively developing solutions for both internal and client-facing products.”
Travelport has been seeing search volumes increase daily as airlines and other suppliers are creating more options and decoupling ancillaries to tailor an offer. “That is why it was imperative for us, as a modern retailing platform for travel, to restructure our search and ordering systems to create a fully predictive and intuitive search infrastructure,” according to Kershaw.
“The way we’re now using AI and machine-learning to improve the speed and accuracy of data-driven search responses is really exciting to see, because it means travel is finally catching up with other modern retailers,” he says. “With this level of intuitiveness, TMCs and travel managers will be able to easily understand what their travelers need, make accurate predictions, and recommend the best trip options.”
Recent Travelport research found that 87 percent of business travelers want recommendations for their trip and 85 percent want agencies to make them. “They want to move from a search model to a recommendation engine model,” Kershaw says. “That is why TMCs and corporate booking tools that can respond to search requests the fastest and proactively recommend trip options that travelers really want, while staying within policy, are going to thrive. Travelport is using AI to not only help agents and travel managers automate routine tasks like refunds and exchanges, but to personalize offers and gain more control with ever-changing pricing and itinerary options for travelers.”
Flatten the Learning Curve
The beauty of the majority of these AI tools is that they don’t require much knowhow or experience to utilize. “On the customer side, the best AI experience is no experience at all,” Karmis says. “Our travelers will experience less friction, increased accuracy and faster service as a result of AI with little to no learning curve. On the TMC side, testing is key to confidence. We know that AI can come with costly mistakes, and our priority is to avoid these missteps from the start.”
For TMCs, Bailey says, the challenge lies in the complexity of integrating AI into existing environments and not being bound by the way processes have worked in the past. “It requires staff to be adequately trained to handle new technologies,” he says. “Effective change management within TMCs, coupled with reliable technical support and vendor collaboration, is also crucial to smooth the transition.”
Coale says well-executed AI solutions should be easily adaptable, scalable and simple to use. Of course, to what extent and how quickly these technologies will make their way into corporate travel programs will depend on several factors. “Amongst these are the appetite of travel programs to try something new, concerns around data security, as well as an organization’s culture, demographics and booking patterns,” he says. “For instance, an organization whose travelers expect very high-touch service or book a lot of complex itineraries might see fewer opportunities to deploy AI-enabled solutions than a company with a self-servicing culture and predominantly point-to-point trips.”
One challenge Travelport is seeing across industries with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, for example, is that the relevancy and accuracy of outputs can be poor if the data being analyzed is outdated or the “right questions” or input are not being asked.
“AI tools require time and practice to learn what is needed from the user and to learn customers, and then ideally, outputs will improve over time,” Kershaw says. “Additionally, when it comes to the end-user experience for business travelers, AI tools being used for real-time servicing cannot always provide the level of support needed when the unexpected happens, no matter how much we expect the unexpected these days.”
Security Concerns
Karmis notes that security is rightly on the mind of people using AI, which is why BCD is working on the first version of an AI policy. “We have an information security and privacy policy, so the natural progression is to create one for AI,” he says. “We’re creating standards including the do’s and don’ts, the procedures and rules to follow to keep our employees and our clients safe. This is a necessary step for the future of AI across the industry.”
As AI becomes a more integral part of our daily lives, Bailey believes potential advancements could be applied to education, neural networks, healthcare, sustainability, and regulatory governance. “In travel, it will change the shopping experience, make information available by simply asking rather than searching or running reports, and take on complex predictive tasks to reduce risk and disruption,” he says. “The future of AI is an open-ended opportunity for additional personalization in the travel process, only limited by our creative application of AI to drive a personalized travel experience.”
TMCs can benefit immensely from using AI solutions to enhance efficiencies, drive cost savings and improve the customer experience. Whether it’s streamlining booking processes, personalizing travel recommendations, enabling real-time data analysis and aiding in strategic decision-making, or providing better traveler assistance, the opportunities are endless.
The biggest benefit of AI, in general, is the simplification of complex operating models, and few industries are as complex as global business travel. As Karmis puts it, “The increased use of AI promises to transform important aspects of TMC service, from the consolidation of back-end technologies to the traveler experience, and the abundance of data and insights available to travel programs.”
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