Assessing AI opportunities through the corporate travel lens

Wanted: prompt engineers, salary $350,000 to $400,000 per annum, computer science qualification not required, was probably not a role you would have seen advertised a year ago. Now, since the launch and evolution of generative artificial intelligence tools including ChatGPT and Bard, many companies are looking for that skill set.

Yet AI itself has been around for decades with some of the early projects in the 1950s seeing the development of games such as chess and checkers.

But what many in travel are grappling with is the impact AI, and generative AI in particular, will have on the industry going forward. Multiple use cases have already been proposed and are being developed - itinerary planning, new ways of search, customer service, efficiency in back-end processes, reduced documentation and personalization.

And with much of the above relevant in the corporate travel arena where manual, time-consuming processes are prevalent, is the travel management community ready?

An audience poll during last week’s Institute of Travel Management event in London revealed that while more than three-quarters have a basic understanding of what AI is, about a fifth are still baffled.

Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX and a panelist at the event, urged the audience to get ahead of AI, stressing the opportunities it presents. 

“It’s probably the most disruptive thing since fire, the wheel, the number zero, all of those things. The difference here is that AI as it is currently being defined is it’s a tool for you. It could probably be the most disruptive technology since fire, wheels, computer, internet, probably more than any of those.”

With much of the audience dedicated to travel procurement, he referenced one company that has said it plans to replace its entire procurement team with AI.

“Do I believe it’s possible? Yes. That doesn’t mean those people are all gone, but underneath that there’s an opportunity for people who can get ahead of this. How do you talk to AI? How do you control AI? How do you get AI to do what you need to do?”

The travel management audience was also asked about its concern around AI, with about 45% saying it's losing control of the technology, 21% worried about the speed of misinformation and 16% concerned about security and data privacy.

While hailing its efficiency benefits, business travel executives have already urged caution in the development and use of generative AI, especially around data privacy.

Choe was joined on the panel by TripStax chief technology officer Scott Wylie, who said he had heard AI likened to fire because it can be used to “heat, scare away predators and cooking but equally it can be used to destroy … and undoubtedly needs to be controlled.”

He added that the pace of development will only accelerate, citing existing use cases of flight and hotel booking within a chat session and the upcoming launch by an airline in the United States of a virtual assistant for group travel.

Wylie also said corporate online booking tools (OBTs) have a challenge with AI because they’re dealing with different sources of inventory and “need to normalize and bring together disparate sources of data and try and make sense of it.”

“If you’re building a system for an individual that is tailored for that individual, and you’re looking at policy, buying patterns, travel patterns, you can do that at an individual level, and there is a case of expanding that out.”

Choe added that if that could happen then any content issues would be solved and OBTs will have to evolve from where they are today. He believes that in two to three years travelers may no longer have to interact with booking tools or agents. Instead, a virtual assistant will devise an itinerary from previous travel patterns and present it to the traveler to give the go-ahead.

“The OBT will cease to exist in its current form because you have all the content and can train this model to be incredibly engaging, helpful, proactive and also always be in policy and you know where your travelers are.”

A similar scenario was recently aired by Norm Rose, Phocuswright senior technology and corporate market analyst. During the Cvent Travel Summit in April he said, "It will have enough knowledge about you and your preferences and enough automation behind it to look at different sources to come up with itineraries that most closely match.”

A final audience poll at the ITM event asked where the biggest opportunities for AI lie with 70% responding automation, speed and efficiency, 17% scientific advancements and 7% mitigation of human error.