Business Travel Show America

GoldSpring Consulting attended the inaugural Business Travel Show America in New York this past week. Here are our top takeaways from this exciting and insightful event.

1. A number of presenters noted their AI can handle around 70% of repetitive traveler questions through chatbots and data queries, freeing TMC staff to focus on higher-value tasks.

   
   

2. AI expands into travel and meetings intelligence, policy compliance, supplier optimization, and historical data analysis to create “should-cost” benchmarks versus actual booking behavior.

   
   

3. AI was shown to value airline status and tailor booking recommendations accordingly, enhancing traveler satisfaction, experience, and personalization.

   
   

4. AI was shown to perform deeper-dive analyses, surfacing potential new vendors by accomplishing tasks that currently exceed available time and/or capacity.

   
   

5. Building trust in AI requires programming systems to admit uncertainty (“I don’t know”) to prevent misinformation and increase user confidence.

   
   

6. Predictive AI has used historical behavior to promote sustainable travel and provide real-time transportation recommendations (e.g., taxi vs. train vs. bus) based on cost, timing, and context.

   
   

7. AI strategy should prioritize solvable tasks that focus on firefighting tasks that consume time but offer little strategic progress. Likely candidates include just-in-time policy information and repetitive traveler queries. 

   
   

8. The proposed “Happy Trip Guarantee” was welcomed, leaving legacy suppliers uncomfortable.

   
   

9. Suppliers underestimate the reputation risk of a poorly executed de-implementation plan. Buyer and supplier equally benefit from a structured approach which supports program integrity and risk management.

   
   

10. OBTs must continue to evolve to integrate into previously disconnected systems. 

    
    

11. One buyer shared an informal poll of 35 buyers resulting in only one buyer expressing confidence that their TMC acts in their best interest—highlighting a significant trust deficit.

    
    

12. TMC indicated that they will increasingly buy rather than build new solutions, choosing specialized third-party providers to stay competitive.