More than 18 months beyond the launch of ChatGPT, some of
the utopian, or apocalyptic, projections of an AI-dominated future seem no more
imminent than they did then. Change is happening, but more incrementally than
what the most bullish prognosticators had said—and robots have not yet replaced
us at our jobs.
The reality check is that many of those big innovations will
rely on more powerful AI capabilities than what currently exist, Jack Staehler,
CWT’s chief technology officer for counselor and traveler technologies, said at
BTN’s recent Tech Talk event in Chicago. Current AI technology—including
ChatGPT—is classified as “weak AI,” meaning it is capable of a
specific task but not capable of truly human-level thinking and learning beyond
that task. As such, there is a lot of “FOMO, inflated expectations”
and a “trough of disillusionment” around AI promises, he said.
“AI is a game-changer, but the game-changing hasn’t
started yet,” Staehler said. “There is so much expectation, but you
can only go so far right now.”
Even some of the team behind ChatGPT have expressed surprise
with how viral it became, given the fact that the technology behind it was not
new when it was released.
“Strong AI” or “super AI” capable of the
fantastic promises being made still is five or so years out, Staehler said, but
current AI technology still is enabling some transformative changes for
corporate travel. During the Tech Talk event, representatives across supplier
categories highlighted some of those changes that are or will soon be happening.
Here are a few examples:
Airlines
Airlines are tapping AI technology to enhance customer
service and communication, said Mahesh Veda, managing director of customer
travel experience with digital technology for United Airlines. During times of
disruption, the technology can help give specifics to passengers around the reasons
and impacts of delays. A simple example is the feature in the United app that
keeps passengers appraised of flight-status specifics—when the arriving flight
is at the gate or being cleaned, for example—to give them a realistic
expectation of when they need to be at the gate, he said.
“If somebody has to manually watch every single one of
these 15 steps to say your plane is departing on time, you would need so many
people with clocks and counters to check all of that,” Veda said.
“Instead of that, there is a machine learning model, so when people start
and stop each one of these, the models run in the back and can say, ‘You still
have enough time.’ “
Generative AI ultimately will better be able to advise
travelers how to better manage disruptions—analyzing options such as flying to
a different airport and driving, for example, according to Veda.
More recently, United launched a seat selection feature that
notifies passengers whose preferred seat types are not available upon booking
if that seat type becomes available, rather than them having to continually
check on seat selection themselves, which he said was another example of the
technology’s application.
Travel Management Companies
TMCs are “definitely in the game” in AI technology
adoption, but they are proceeding in a cautious way, Staehler said. In part,
that is keeping the wants of travelers in mind; there is a varying appetite for
the potential of booking travel via AI platforms such as ChatGPT, particularly among
geographic regions, he said. More importantly, however, errors could be
potentially devastating for client relations.
“We can’t afford to have a hallucination, a completely
unexpected and irrelevant response,” Staehler said. “One mistake like
that can cost a whole account and not only ruin someone’s day but ruin a big
business deal. We can’t take chances like that, but that doesn’t mean that’s
stopping us right now.”
Aid in responding to customer emails is among the biggest current
opportunities in AI for TMCs, especially considering in some countries email
requests are a bigger source for bookings than self-booking or voice, he said.
AI can pull relevant information and hand it off to an agent, who then is
better equipped to respond to the request quickly and accurately.
“You still end up having an agent-assisted interaction,
but we’re figuring out how much we can gather before it’s handed off to an
agent,” Staehler said.
Those capabilities will expand and improve over time, but
for now, use is “fairly limited” and in the “very early
stages,” he added.
Hotels
Smart room technology is helping hotels to personalize guest
experiences, and that will go a step further as it can incorporate data on
guest profiles and preferences, Loews Hotels CIO Daniel Kornick said. Guests
will be able to arrive in their rooms with the temperature set at their liking,
their favorite cheeseburger waiting or the blinds already closed if a nap is
first on their agenda.
Such technology also helps hotels with sustainability
initiatives, with the ability to adjust temperature and lights automatically
when rooms are unoccupied to provide energy savings.
Just as facial recognition is making its way into airports,
it also is coming to hotels, with the potential to speed up the check-in
process as well as enable access to special areas of the hotel, Kornick said.
Eventually, it can be tied to payment, with guests able to order food and
beverages from the counter and pay with their face, he said.
AI technology will help hotel security teams as well. Such
teams often are tasked with monitoring hundreds of security cameras across the
hotel, and AI technology can watch and understand patterns and help the teams
pinpoint exactly where they should be looking, Kornick said.
AI chat technology, meanwhile, is proving particularly
effective for guests on-site at hotels for their ability to answer frequently
asked questions without the need for human intervention, he said. Hotel Tech
Report’s State of Hotel Guest Technology Report 2024, based on a survey of 400
hotel guests, found the most frequent requests to chatbots are getting the
Wi-Fi password, confirming operating hours and—surprisingly—setting up a
wake-up call.
“Chatbots are working,” Kornick said.
“They’re being effective, and they’re helping us be more productive.”
Car Rental
Forget self-driving cars for now. One area in the rental car
industry where AI can significantly and more immediately increase efficiencies
is in the return and inspection process, said Jeff Kaelin, VP of technology
strategy and performance for the Avis Budget Group. Avis, for example, has been
testing AI technology to automate inspections, which can identify damage not
only when vehicles are returned but also before they are rented, ensuring a
customer is not blamed for damage that was there when they first rented the
vehicle.
As with TMCs, Avis is doing “rigorous testing” on
the technology before using it on a wider basis, Kaelin said.
“This has to be right; we can’t send out a report for
damage that’s erroneous,” he said. “Through the end of the year,
we’ll get to about 600,000 examples or so to make sure we have the technology
right.”
Expense/Payment
AI is nothing new in the expense management field, with the
technology key in helping to prepopulate expense reports and to catch spending
anomalies, Edenred SVP of travel solutions Juliann Pless said. It can help with
processing payment and expense data as well, making more accurate forecasts and
evaluating opportunities for savings, which has implications across the travel
program.
One specific area in payment where AI will play a factor is
in “enhanced payment orchestration,” helping buyers determine which
payment methods make the most sense for certain situations, Pless said.
“That could go a long way for buyers who have global programs with
multiple currencies.”
Chargeback response management is another area of potential
for AI in payments, she said. When cards are compromised, disputes can
sometimes take four weeks or more before a refund is issued, and AI could speed
that process up. “Imagine AI being able to craft responses and trigger the
dispute process on your behalf after it finds an error,” she said.
Staying in the Game
While those by no means are an exhaustive list of AI
applications in corporate travel, it is indicative of a technology sea change
that is beginning in the industry. As such, travel professionals who are not
gaining firsthand experience with the technology stand to be left behind.
“If you’re not using AI for something in your life, you
need to go play with it,” said Brad Watts, VP of digital product and
analytics for Cornerstone Information Systems. “You need to just start
getting a feel for it.”
At the same time, the industry needs to maintain its
cautious approach to the technology, as the eventual arrival of “super
AI” could bring a whole new wave of disruption, Staehler said.
“We can approach AI like any technical rollout of new
software or systems in silos, or we can embrace it with pragmatic
cross-collaboration and scrutiny,” he said. “The latter can not only
help to flatten out the hype cycle in this transformative period but change the
game entirely for the long term.”
