The 56th annual Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) Convention, held this year in Denver, featured presentations and sessions from leaders in the business travel industry.
Here is a roundup of some of the notable news:
- Expense management platform Emburse launched integrations with American Airlines AAdvantage Business and DoorDash for Business, meaning business travelers’ receipts from both platforms will be automatically imported to Emburse. The company said this helps streamline the user experience while decreasing fraud risk and giving finance teams more insight into “real-time spend.” Emburse AI also automatically combines receipts and credit card transactions into one entry.
- Extended Stay America launched its business travel program, Client Connect, which is designed for extended-stay business travelers. The hotel brand said the program combines its suite of business travel services and was developed to address the needs of business travelers such as construction crews, traveling nurses, military personnel and other professionals who require longer-term accommodations. The Client Connect program is accessible via the web and mobile and is available immediately to business clients.
- Corporate AI program BizTrip.AI announced its launch at the GBTA Convention. The startup is co-founded by entrepreneur and CEO Tom Tomary (former CEO of price-tracking tool Yapta) and agentic AI innovator and chief technology officer Scott Persinger and launched by venture studio AI Fund, headed by Andrew Ng. BizTrip.AI said it uses agentic AI to “modernize processes and address the innovation voids around airfare and hotel booking, itinerary change management and price tracking and re-shopping.” The platform is described as a “personal concierge” for business travelers, also optimizing management costs for travel planners via a chat feature with an automated personal assistant.
- American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) announced an expansion with Chooose, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startup for 2023, to upgrade its hotel emissions tracking and reporting tools. When the new features launch in the third quarter this year, hotels will be able to take advantage of city-level emissions reporting, customizable emissions calculations and full data integration into Amex GBT’s Global Trip Record and Data Lake. In addition to this expanded partnership, Amex GBT also launched Guest T&E, an end-to-end platform for companies to manage travel and expenses of non-employees.
- Amadeus Cytric, Amadeus’ corporate travel and expense management platform, has partnered with international travel management company (TMC) Globespan. The alliance allows the TMC to sell Amadeus Cytric to customers in the United States and Canada, also granting Globespan access to all of the Cytric Easy functions, including the Microsoft Teams integration. Through Amadeus, Globespan issued a live NDC ticket from Air Canada in the Canadian market, with the companies claiming they are the first to do so.
- SAP Concur announced three innovations at the GBTA Convention, including a new booking agent for its network of Joule Agents. The latest addition helps with booking “policy compliant trips,” without requiring travelers to know all of the details themselves. The company also introduced new features for Concur Request, including travel advisories and the ability for finance leaders to approve budgets for recurring trips. Upgrades allow travelers to submit budget requests for their fellow team members as well. Within Concur Travel, travelers can now purchase third-party services via Trip Extras. The company said the innovations “make it easier for travelers to book within policy, stay informed on the go and streamline every step of their journey.”
- Navan announced two innovations, both designed to “remove common pain points for travelers and finance teams.” The first product is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hotel check-in solution that automates hotel credit card authorizations for business travelers and confirms late checkouts ahead of time. The second product is a content aggregation platform for airport bookings, which is built on the latest New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard.
- DerbySoft launched its AI Voice Agent to streamline processes for travel companies. The solution is particularly helpful for the business travel sector, where DerbySoft said 30% or more of global accommodation bookings involve manual phone or email intervention. The AI Voice Agent tool can confirm booking details, verify payment information, request invoices and fill in or correct and missing data and manage booking modifications and cancellations.