GBTA Europe Tech Committee - Rethinking Corporate Travel with AI

The episode shows how artificial intelligence is moving from novelty bots to core corporate‑travel platforms. By embedding AI in chat tools such as Teams or Slack, travelers can request bookings, changes, or cancellations while the system automatically applies company policy, preferred suppliers and negotiated rates. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) acts as a secure bridge, allowing AI services to query airline back‑ends or expense systems without exposing raw data. This approach promises to shrink choice overload—from dozens of options to a curated three‑to‑five list—while maintaining auditability and compliance, a critical shift for global travel programs.

Johnny highlights current roadblocks: limited access to HR profiles, reliance on legacy GDS/NDC feeds, and the need for new user‑experience models that rely on prompt‑based conversations. He argues that a single‑source‑of‑truth data lake, governed by the corporation’s InfoSec team, can feed multiple specialized AI agents—what he calls agentic AI—to handle tasks such as duty‑of‑care checks, project‑code validation, and fraud detection. By keeping payment logic in a separate AI layer, virtual cards or ledger transfers can be assigned automatically, removing the traveler from the payment decision loop and reducing out‑of‑policy spend.

For travel leaders evaluating these technologies, the advice is pragmatic. Start with a pilot group of frequent, tech‑savvy travelers—often under thirty‑five—and test two or three vendors in parallel to avoid lock‑in. Ensure contracts grant full ownership of travel data and the right to repurpose it across services. Verify that any MCP implementation provides a documented audit trail for every bot‑to‑bot interaction, satisfying GDPR and other privacy regulations. By focusing on real‑world use cases rather than hype, organizations can accelerate adoption, cut costs, and build a resilient, AI‑driven travel ecosystem.