Addressing Common Pain Points in Corporate Travel
Corporate travel management often feels like a balancing act. Travel managers are tasked with booking for guest travelers, managing unused tickets, preventing leakage, and ensuring traveler safety, all while controlling costs.
In a study carried out by the Global Business Travel Association, research highlights several pain points organizations and travelers typically experience:
- Guest travel gaps: 57% of travel managers struggle with systems that don’t support guest travel, leading to workarounds and policy breaches.
- Unused tickets: 54% find it challenging to track and reuse tickets, resulting in wasted time and money.
- Leakage: 67% report off-policy air bookings, and 81% see the same for hotels, weakening program control.
- Booking complexity: 64% cite difficulties with exchanges and cancellations in their online booking tools (OBTs).
- Rising costs: Over half of managers name cost increases as a top challenge.
- Traveler friction: Nearly half of business travelers find airport security, hotel selection, and transfers highly stressful.
- Duty of care: Legacy systems make real-time tracking and risk alerts difficult.
Left unmanaged, these issues drain budgets, frustrate travelers, and reduce program adoption. Addressing these pain points requires innovative solutions that streamline processes and enhance traveler experiences.
The Role of AI in Modern Travel Management
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing corporate travel by automating complex tasks and providing actionable insights. AI-driven solutions can:
Automate repetitive tasks: Freeing up travel managers to focus on strategy rather than administrative duties. ALTOUR’s AI Insights is our AI powered virtual personal assistant – pulling together information you need, when you need it.
Track and reuse tickets: AI can identify unused tickets and recommend how to reissue them, saving significant costs. ALTOUR’s AI Insights offers clients a dashboard with instant visibility of unused tickets, along with sight of visa status, carbon emissions, traveler locations, travel request status and so much more.
Spot anomalies: AI can detect off-policy bookings and surface “next best” options, ensuring compliance. Welcome to AI Book, your VIP travel assistant. Bookings take place in seconds using natural language via text, email or voice, providing content for flights and hotels that are in policy and can also provide personalized content to increase policy compliance and traveler satisfaction.
Provide proactive support: AI can send early alerts about delays and offer alternative travel options, enhancing the traveler experience. AI Predict is a predictive travel tool that lets your team handle travel disruptions before they become travel problems. Whether it’s delays, cancellations or reroutes, AI Predict helps you act early and stay ahead. Rebook faster with ALTOUR’s live agent support, anywhere, anytime
At ALTOUR, we believe in leveraging AI to create a seamless travel experience that is both efficient and user-friendly.
Enhancing Traveler Experience with Proactive Support
A frictionless travel experience is essential for traveler satisfaction and program adoption. Imagine a sales director named Sophie who benefits from an AI-powered travel program:
Booking made simple: Sophie books travel for a job candidate directly in the system. The guest traveler functionality enforces policy automatically, eliminating the need for manual workarounds.
Proactive alerts: When Sophie is on her business trip, she receives a delay alert from I Predict before leaving for the airport, which could make her late for her meeting, so she simply chats with an ALTOUR agent to check for alternative flights and rebooks on the next best flight. Saving her valuable time, whilst keeping her on the move.
Seamless communication: If Sophie needs to check the status of her travelers across the globe, she simply goes onto AI Insights and finds all her travelers locations on a map. She can also reach out to her travelers via email or text from within the platform. Making duty of care so simple.
Real-time updates: Real-time alerts keep Sophie aware of local disruptions and safety updates with AI Shield. ALTOUR’s AI powered risk management tool.
By focusing on proactive support, travel managers and travelers can ensure a smoother, more enjoyable travel experience for their employees.
Optimizing Costs and Managing Unused Tickets
Cost optimization is a critical aspect of corporate travel management. Unused tickets represent a significant area of waste and managing costs can be a challenge. This is where AI and human expertise can amplify your travel program.
Track unused tickets: Identify unused tickets from within AI Insights and utilize those unused tickets from within our online booking tools, such as AI Book or ALTOUR Connect.
Renegotiate vendor contracts: Use actionable insights to renegotiate contracts, reducing costs. At ALTOUR, we believe in a smarter, data-driven and client-specific strategy that adapts to market realities when it comes to negotiation with vendors, our consultancy service offers clients a tailored approach to their travel program.
Prevent leakage: ALTOUR’s AI – powered tools ensure policy compliance, so travel managers can prevent off-policy expenditures. Your policy is inbuilt into platforms like AI Book and ALTOUR Connect. We can also help you communicate complex travel policy through engaging AI-generated video’s.
Competitive fares: NDC (New Distribution Capability) is transforming the way airlines distribute fares and services. ALTOUR is making sure clients benefit from it and NDC fares are seamlessly integrated into our booking platforms and reporting. So you see the lowest logical fares and capture unused tickets in one place, all while maintaining policy compliance.
Implementing these strategies can lead to substantial cost savings and a more efficient travel program.
Ensuring Duty of Care and Real-Time Risk Management
Duty of care is paramount in corporate travel. Legacy systems often fall short in providing real-time tracking and risk alerts. Modern solutions can:
Real-time tracking: Monitor traveler locations and provide immediate risk alerts. AI Shield is our risk management tool that keeps your travelers alert of risks and travel managers ahead of risks affecting travelers. For the more complex trips, we have a bespoke risk management consultancy to ensure that your travelers are protected no matter what territory they are.
Built-in escalation protocols: Ensure travelers receive timely assistance in case of emergencies. In out of hours, ALTOUR’s AI Shield can support your travelers with risk alerts and notifying them of what’s happening and what to do, before and during travel.
Organizations meet their duty of care obligations while ensuring employee safety and confidence on the road.
At ALTOUR, we’re building a future, where corporate travel is predictable, measurable, and traveler-first. Our intelligent solutions combine AI with human expertise to eliminate inefficiencies and deliver a travel program people actually want to use.
Experience travel, The ALTOUR Way
