In practical terms, what can bots, and more generally automation tools, bring to business travellers and Travel Managers ? This is essentially the question raised by the GBTA France on the occasion of the Meeting place for experts organised on 22 January by the association, on the premises of French Event BoosterPorte de Versailles. The subject of this the rise of robotics in the world of business travel, which calls for concrete answers so that those involved in business travel can prepare themselves in the best possible way for the augmented Travel Managent. That's why GBTA France has brought together these experts, encouraging them to take a practical approach, backed up by equally practical examples.
The first exchange session, on the theme of " The bots in the Travel, Meetings & Events sector: evolution or revolution? This year's conference, entitled "The world of conversational robots", highlighted the applications of these conversational robots in the world of business travel and MICE. Based on examples from Sam - the chatbot developed several years ago by 3mundi then FCM -tools proposed by Eventmaker in the events sector, Travel Managers have been able to grasp both the possibilities offered by these new tools, and the design process that presides over their development. Defining the right context, the right timing for sending out information, choosing the tone with which the robot will convey the message, building the necessary links with content sources to integrate ad hoc APIs: these are just some of the trade secrets that will guarantee - or not - a tangible benefit for the business traveller. The aim is not to integrate technology for technology's sake, but to serve the traveller and his company pragmatically: " The aim is to develop the application by putting it at the service of passengers, because once they have adopted it, it becomes easier to push certain messages, particularly in terms of compliance "Aude Kremer, Technology Director, FCM Travel Solutions, will be taking part in the Experts' Forum.
Another area for discussion at this Experts' Forum was the concept of "reverse yield management". In recent years, new tools have been developed to counteract the price fluctuations driven by the airline and hotel industries. The aim is to identify post-booking market opportunities. In other words: to check, downstream of each booking and right up to the day of departure, whether an equivalent or superior offer is available at a lower cost. Yapta, TripBam, FairFly and FlyR are just some of the specialists in this field, who have also been joined by more 'traditional' business travel players such as American Express GBT and HRS. While this quasi-automatic lever for savings logically aroused the interest of the travel managers present, it also demonstrated the importance of the human expertise required to implement such a tool upstream. These new 'rebooking' solutions mean that flexible - and therefore more expensive - fares have to be chosen, in fineBoth the company and the passenger will benefit. The former in terms of fares, the latter in terms of comfort. It's a subtle balance, which varies according to the type of journey each company makes.
