What does your new role as Head of Travel, Advisory and Community entail?
Sandra Lévy – That’s a good question! I spent twenty years in purchasing, eighteen of them at Metro, eight years in indirect purchasing, and I was a member of the board of directors of’AFTM. I am well aware of the challenges faced by travel buyers, travel managers, CFOs… The idea is to help companies, prospects, clients, or more broadly the ecosystem, including consultants and other suppliers in the sector, to modernize their business travel and meet their challenges. And to create a community, with these same people, to share best practices, advance the industry, and bring forward ideas for new features by listening to customers. I’m a bit of a voice of the customer internally; I connect with the product teams.
Does this transition from the world of purchasing to that of TMC give you a different approach?
Sandra Lévy – I fully understand the purchasing challenges, especially the issue of visibility over spending. This complicates negotiations with the providers. There is also often a lack of fluidity for the user and traveler experience, not to mention CSR and the duty of care. When I saw that Navan reconciled all of this on a single platform, I was impressed by this ability to disrupt the market: instead of building one tool and then another and trying to link them together, they created a unified technology from the outset, bringing together travel agency, booking management, payment, and expense reporting on a single platform. Navan also recently acquired BoomPop for the meetings & events management part. I followed them, and I am happy to be joining a position I can build myself.
You obviously subscribe to Navan’s vision of AI.
Sandra Lévy – Absolutely. It’s already good that we talk more about AI than in the past, but we often stick to a chatbot concept, which is a bit of a marketing gimmick. At Navan, it’s completely different: we talk about proactive AI, which anticipates rather than reacting to a prompt. For example, it can detect that a train is late and suggest changing a taxi accordingly. We will soon launch Travel Pro, an agent-based AI, a true personal assistant that accompanies the traveler on a daily basis. Another example: a traveler who has a flight at 4 p.m. and a taxi ordered at noon. The AI anticipates that it will rain, that traffic will intensify, and suggests moving the taxi half an hour early. If the person doesn’t respond immediately, they are reconnected. It can also memorize habits, for example that the traveler likes to take a shower before taking off, and book access to the lounge accordingly.
Does this obsession with simplifying the traveler’s life extend to the back-office as well?
Sandra Lévy – Yes, to the travel manager, the buyer, the HR department for the duty of care, and the dashboards. In terms of purchasing, I was struck by the automated dashboards, available in real time: you have the details of travel spend immediately, which allows you to make decisions based on reliable and up-to-date data, rather than having to aggregate different dashboards, formats, and suppliers to sort through them yourself, which was the real work of the buyer on a day-to-day basis.
Technology wasn’t the weak point that was pointed out about Navan. Does AI solve everything? What role remains for the human being, and what about the takeover of Reed & Mackay?
Sandra Lévy – This is a question we often get asked. Our virtual assistant, Ava, now resolves more than % 50 requests without needing to contact human support. That’s already huge. When she can’t, we switch to a human support channel by phone or chat: Navan employees with an average of seven years of experience in business travel, paid not by volume, margin, or additional sales, but by customer satisfaction. A virtuous model, therefore. This service is available 24/7/365 and included in the offer: you can call ten times, it’s free. That sets us apart from other TMCs that charge for this service.
Isn’t the ultimate goal to automate 90 to 100 jobs % through AI?
Sandra Lévy – I think there will always be a need for humans to make certain decisions, especially problematic ones. There is a governance issue behind it. The travel manager’s role is transforming: we are moving from a role focused on crisis management and improving administrative processes to a role that focuses on strategic decisions that serve the transformation of the company. The ROI of projects, the duty of care, CSR… It is becoming a complete and strategic profession. Some thought their job would disappear in two years; on the contrary, it is transforming and becoming more interesting. On the Reed & Mackay We work in symbiosis with them; they manage our VIP clients through the Navan Premier offer, which is directly managed by their private advisors.
What about data privacy as AI takes on more of a role, especially in these VIP transfers?
Sandra Lévy – Indeed, there are many potential misuses of AI. Fortunately, we have numerous IT security protocols and certifications: SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001. We have maximum security, and internally, some AI are allowed, others are not. We comply with these rules and we are highly scrutinized in this regard. Clients also have very detailed IT checklists to complete; it’s almost the first thing we see in tender documents now.
The latest Navan barometer indicated the rise in popularity of trains over airplanes. A surprise?
Sandra Lévy – No, it’s an important topic for us, and customers are asking us about it in the area of sustainability. We are responding to this via Navan Edge On a route like Paris-Marseille by plane, a pop-up offers to switch to train, indicating the possible carbon emission savings, without preventing the passenger from keeping the plane if they wish. It also offers automatic reconciliation of carbon balances using three calculation methods to find out the emissions according to the type of aircraft. CO₂ emissions are displayed from the booking stage, not afterwards. We have a partnership with Squake Regarding sustainability, and we are proposing to customers to participate in the SAF in aviation through a contract with Neste, which allows them to save % up to 85 emissions.
Could you talk about the acquisition of BoomPop?
Sandra Lévy – This is good news: on the same platform, users will benefit from full event management. To put it in my buying hat: managing an event, with sourcing suppliers, venue, transportation, logistics, and visibility into the actual cost was a real headache. With BoomPop, they will have full visibility and be able to measure the cost and ROI of the event. BoomPop brings together a set of partnerships with hotels and different venues, as well as AI to pre-source locations up to full event management. We also have integration with Engine, an API partnership that allows you to modify or cancel even after the event or travel has started, a flexibility that few tools currently offer.
We have been talking about the rapprochement between travel management and MICE for at least a dozen years now, without much progress. So, is it finally becoming a reality?
Sandra Lévy – Exactly, and it makes sense. MICE accounts for nearly % 30% of travel spending, but remains little visible because it is fragmented: transportation on one side, hotels on the other, etc. Here, we will be able to consolidate the data and have relevant analyses for decisions regarding future events.
What is your roadmap for the coming months?
Sandra Lévy – At Navan, there are still many innovations to come; some of them will be announced at Navigate, our EMEA event organized on October 15 in Paris, after the New York event in May. The idea is to bring together decision-makers around talks on the future of AI and travel, with workshops and peer-to-peer exchanges. Personally, I want to continue creating events and networking opportunities for buyers and travel managers, in a smaller format. We have Customer Advisory Boards internationally, two or three per year; I would like to create one locally in Paris, in French. The VIP service and Travel Flow were also born from requests from our customers: we are very responsive at Navan.
Navan also places a great deal of emphasis on its remuneration system…
All the agencies emphasize the integration of NDC…
Sandra Lévy – But how many actually do it and with how many airlines? At Navan France, 80 % of our tickets are made with the main French airline in NDC.
What about the hotel industry?
Sandra Lévy – References are made to Booking, Expedia, Priceline, Agoda content, in addition to negotiated rates, in addition to the latest NDC announced, the First on the travel market with the group Hilton. We are truly making our customers benefit from the best content available. We still manage nearly 12 billion dollars in travel spending worldwide every year. We are making our customers benefit from our preferential rates. 70 % of the bookings are made on the top five results. For the user, the adoption rate reaches % 90 on average. The savings that can be realized are 15 on % average in the travel budget. The NDC integrations are also key. It is crucial that the employees trust the platform. Since they can find all the content available live, leakage drops. And so, in the end, it is a triple win. The user easily books a trip – on average in just seven minutes. The company generates savings and has visibility into spending. And at Navan, we enjoy an excellent adoption rate. We know that travelers use our platform. Everyone wins in the end, so we have every interest in developing this system. As for hotels, we incentivize employees with Navan Rewards to encourage them to choose a hotel that is cheaper than their travel policy. They earn points that they can spend on a personal trip. I find that very virtuous.
