AI in Corporate Travel: Finding the Right Fit and Balance

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

“The only wrong move is no move,” concluded Skift Research and McKinsey & Company in their joint report from 2023 on how “advances in artificial intelligence (AI)…are setting the stage for travel companies to rethink how they interact with customers, develop products and services, and manage operations.”

According to the 2024 McKinsey Global Survey on AI, AI adoption is spiking across industries worldwide. Having hovered at around 50% for a few years, the adoption of AI technology is now at 72% globally. AI is “about becoming smarter, faster, and more responsive,” wrote Janet Lam, an AI solutions expert, in a recent Forbes column. And like a powerful high-speed vehicle, users have to learn how to operate AI and draw up a clear roadmap before flooring it.

In step with these trends, corporate travel managers are making organizational AI moves — but are they the right moves?

Skift spoke with Tory Passons, senior vice president, head of TravelBank product and corporate payment partnerships for U.S. Bank, to weigh in on the advantages and benefits versus the boundaries and drawbacks of AI in corporate travel.

For a start, Passons believes that AI’s value proposition includes obvious “low-hanging fruit” benefits such as personalizing and optimizing the booking experience.

“For corporate travelers especially, AI’s ability to learn from their booking behavior and preferences, including where, how, when, and why they go places, eases the entire process,” said Passons. “AI’s pattern-based learning likewise eases getting or giving approvals, either automatically or by routing to a decision-maker, by generating reasonable cost estimates based on past activity.”

This saves time and money, which benefits travel and finance managers, and de-stresses the process, which helps the traveler. Passons added that, “removing friction is a top AI advantage.”

Passons recommended starting off slowly and then pausing to develop a clear sense of direction before accelerating into high gear.

Ask simple but important questions:

• Why do you want AI in the first place?
• Where does AI best fit into your company’s workflow, or not?
• Do you want to be first to market?
• Are you a fast follower? Or are you a slower, wait-and-see adopter?
• Are you serious about innovation, or using AI for innovation’s sake?

Aligning AI with company culture is part of the refinement process that goes with all new technologies, but without a thoughtful process, roadblocks are inevitable. Absent due refinement, AI tools may be too rigid or confusing, misaligned with existing workflows, or may outpace internal capabilities or external partner support. Such challenges cause user frustration and friction.

“Treat AI as a transformative journey mapped to the personality of your organization and what you want to accomplish,” said Passons.

Passons is most excited about what AI-driven data analytics can do for corporate travel.

“AI’s effectiveness is founded on the quality and availability of your data,” he said. “If you have the data at your fingertips, AI does what it does best, looking deeply into all that data to actively and holistically support and manage the travel experience.”

For example, using AI, business travelers can describe their itinerary, including destinations, dates, and business purpose. After checking the employee’s calendar and travel history, the system can easily route the plan for budgeting and approvals.

Once on the trip, in-transit support may include AI-supported real-time disruption alerts and rebooking suggestions, as well as management of real-time expense reporting and compliance. Say a dinner bill exceeds policy — AI will prompt for the receipt.

That ability to flag and encourage policy compliance in real time is a critical upgrade, perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit on the tree. “That’s a big one, given policy tensions and challenges at most companies,” said Passons. “AI clarifies the confusion and enforces compliance by ensuring that all bookings adhere to policy.”

Because corporate travel policies are proprietary within individual companies, they’re easy to access. Using AI to communicate them to employees in real time allows companies to update them dynamically without having to send mass, manual communications about the tiniest tweaks.

Data insights cultivated from these automated actions also empower managers to do so much more, from gaining more negotiating power with vendors and more control over forecasting to auto-flagging unusual spending patterns, suggesting areas for cost savings, and predictive analysis.

“AI simultaneously streamlines and eases the process for the traveler and manager, providing both with the best possible experience,” said Passons. “That’s particularly true for travel and finance managers. AI is not automating their jobs but using automation to make their jobs infinitely easier, like eliminating the usual drill of chasing down expense reports and figuring out who spent how much on what at the end of every month.”

Employee service is another popular use of AI in corporate travel. AI chatbots can effectively answer common “how-to” questions, clarify policy, check flight status, and otherwise help travelers with basic information and support. The conversational AI chatbot is an interesting combination that serves as a virtual assistant.

Chatbots can only do so much, though, which makes preserving the human element in corporate travel services critical.

“Travel will always be a highly personal experience that technology alone cannot — and should not — support,” said Passons. “The more complicated the travel situation, like a business delegation en route to a meeting having to suddenly rebook a multi-leg trip, the less effective the chatbot, and the greater the friction.”

Could that change as AI continues to evolve and improve?

The subject of a recent Skift podcast, Agentic AI is gaining attention as an advanced form of autonomous AI that can think, adapt, and operate with little or no human oversight. As Skift explored in its State of Travel 2025 report, the pace of technology is relentless. Machine learning was once the gold standard for AI. Now it is mere table stakes. Generative AI is surpassing predictive AI. Large Language Models (LLMs) that use neural network principles to understand human language are scaling up. A more agentic future is inevitable.

Ultimately, Passons does not foresee AI replacing the human element. “What AI will do,” he said, “is make us more productive in our jobs by removing friction, tension, and other traditional constraints, while improving and enhancing travel across the board. Let fit and balance be your guide.”

AI is destined to supercharge efficiency and productivity in corporate travel, making the overall experience far easier and more enjoyable for travelers and corporate finance and travel managers alike. As with all new technologies, though, it’s important for companies to dull the glare of its brilliance and have a clear view of why, when, where, and how they will bring AI into their organizations.

See how one CEO in the travel space is thoughtfully prioritizing customer service alongside technological innovation: https://travelbank.com/blog/travel-tips/customer-service-matters

This content was created collaboratively by TravelBank and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.