Here's How AI Can Help Fix Business Travel. Eventually

20.06.2024 - 15:01 / skift.com

Few things are more tedious for the business traveler than itemizing weeks worth of client dinners, drinks with vendors and rushed breakfasts. 

Mastercard thinks artificial intelligence will be able to help with the worst of it: AI can be used to assure spending falls within predetermined company guidelines, automatically itemize travel expenses and then submit those expenses to the appropriate approver on behalf of an employee. 

“This ultimately saves business travelers’ time, allowing them to replace hours spent sifting through and manually entering receipts with more strategic tasks,” Chad Wallace, Mastercard’s global head of commercial solutions, said in a written interview. 

That’s just one example – or three if you break it down – of what’s expected. Mastercard found that nine in 10 travel decision-makers plan on investing in AI and machine learning to improve processes and personalize travel for employees.

“We’ve seen a proliferation of players across the industry leaning into exploring ways to integrate AI in order to improve experiences across every stage of the business trip – from booking to managing spend and expenses,” Wallace said.

The efficiency of new technology is needed as global business travel spending is expected to surpass 2019 levels this year, according to the Global Business Travel Association’s Business Travel Index released in August, two years sooner than it had previously forecast.

While the potential of AI is real, it’s also not without risk and is still very much in its infancy. One needs to look no further than early this year when an  Air Canada chatbot gave bad information to a customer and had to pay out for it. Or, more recently, when McDonald’s said it would end a two-year test with IBM using AI for drive-thru ordering after at least one customer reported that he got bacon on his ice cream and another said the bot messed up her order and gave her nine sweet teas.  

HRS, a travel management tech platform, continues to invest in AI as part of its efforts to meet business traveler demands and comply with company policies. 

“That automation is working behind the scenes in parallel with always-evolving corporate travel policy,” Michael Brophy, head of public relations at HRS, said in an interview. “For security purposes and financial purposes, you want to try and steer your travelers to stay at hotels that are in your program, and then if you can overlay that with technology driven by AI into the persona of that traveler.”

It’s one thing to serve a traveler who is on the road five times per month and another who travels only once per quarter, he noted. Streamlining needs under one hood eases the executive’s life and the company compiles data it needs.

“We have really