It's hard to recall any technology having such an instant impact on corporate travel, or indeed anything, in quite the same way as generative artificial intelligence. Since research and deployment company OpenAI unleashed its large language model-based AI interface ChatGPT on the world, for free, on Nov. 30, 2022, travel suppliers, service providers and managers alike have scrambled to understand this pioneering innovation and apply it to their work.
In addition to speeding up computer coding, suggested early applications for generative AI for travel managers have included improved data aggregation and presentation, improved chatbots for handling routine traveler inquiries, supplier deal analysis, automated complaint letters to suppliers, request-for-proposals generation and contract summarization. Applications for travelers include personalized itinerary planning, translation services and self-booking through natural language conversation instead of menu clicking.
Companies which have claimed AI-based business travel product launches in 2023 include Accenture, Amadeus Cytric, Microsoft, Cvent, ATG, Cerebri AI, Navan and Egencia, to name but a few – although whether all of these innovations are based specifically on generative AI, which effectively trains computers to create and communicate, was not always clear.
But in a sector like travel management that, stripped to its essence, is all about communication, the transformative potential of generative AI at this point appears infinite. "The way ChatGPT presents information and the depth of information it has access to are absolutely revolutionary," BTN was told in March 2023 by Groups360 sales vice president for Europe Dan Humby, also co-chair of the Global Business Travel Association's European meetings and events committee.
Charismatic, perhaps even messianic, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a professional connection with travel. He joined the board of online travel agency giant (and former Egencia parent) Expedia in 2019. Altman quit in June 2023, but not before Expedia had launched its own ChatGPT travel planning tool two months earlier.
Still only 38 years old, Altman had already crammed in a career as social networking app creator, venture fund capitalist and tech startup accelerator leader, with a side hustle in developing nuclear fusion, before co-founding OpenAI in 2015.
Altman has warned several times of the potential for AI to go wrong and treat it with caution. Something went wrong too in November 2023 at OpenAI, whose board sacked Altman, only for him to be reinstated five days later following employee and shareholder protests. With Microsoft having announced a "multibillion-dollar" investment in OpenAI, the world waits agog to see what rabbit Altman pulls out of the hat next.