Norwegian tech startup Travelin.AI, a booking platform with a particular focus on helping companies and travelers manage blended business and leisure travel, has been building a base of direct corporate customers and soon will expand via agreements with travel management companies, according to CEO and co-founder Roy Golden.
With a soft launch in July 2022, Travelin.AI was born in part from Golden’s own frustrations as a corporate traveler with the length of time it took to book a hotel and the inability to book on his corporate platform travel for his family, who were accompanying him on a business trip. Research with business travelers prior to launch showed the inability to book blended travel was the third most common reason they were booking outside of their corporate platforms, following dissatisfaction with the technology and lack of content, he said.
In terms of speed, the booking tool was built “to get you in and out as fast as possible,” with bookings happening in the range of 20 seconds to two minutes, Golden said. It was built on a “shopping cart” model, where different aspects of the trip can be combined into the cart for a single booking. Results can be viewed by what’s fastest, earliest or cheapest; a “best” option is coming once AI models are implemented, he said.
Travelin.AI is connected to Amadeus for content and has begun launching car rental and hotel booking via Travelport as well, Golden said. It will soon expand to include flight content from Travelport, and the company is in discussions with Sabre for content as well, he said.
For the blended travel aspect, the platform enables travelers to book on a single profile for both business and leisure travel, according to Golden. It also is able to separate expenses for personal travel, including, for example, determining if a flight would have been cheaper had it not been booked for a different day for leisure travel and putting that difference in the personal charges column, he said.
Additionally, the platform lets companies make travel a part of a compensation package, as a bonus, with that budget digitally available at checkout, according to Golden.
Travelin.AI recently received a customer boost when Norwegian business software and consultancy provider Visma, which negotiates framework agreements for non-core procurement for about 9,000 companies, reached an agreement with the platform to begin bringing some of its accounts onto it. Visma had been working with Egencia but decided to go into the market for a new platform and was impressed by the demo for Travelin.AI, Visma head of commercial Kristian Kvernberg said. It’s the first time it has done so with a startup, he said.
“I had never seen a platform which was that simple and at the same time had a lot of the functionality you actually need to do your business trips,” Kvernberg said. “We haven’t had this huge of a focus on a travel platform since ever, but we see a huge potential.”
For its next step, Travelin.AI currently is pursuing a funding round from which it will work on automating self-service for air bookings as well as work on the AI side, Golden said. In the meantime, it is nearing a contract with a TMC, which is where the platform “mainly wants to work with,” he said.
The blended travel bookings capabilities will be a major selling point with TMCs, as it can help increase volumes for negotiations and keep travelers in-platform, according to Golden. It also will be a selling point as it seeks to expand into the U.S., beyond its “test market” of Norway and Scandinavia.
“It’s perfect for the American market, since only 50 percent of Americans get holiday, and those 50 percent that do get it are afraid to take it,” Golden said. “That’s why their business trips are quite purposeful and extended.”
