artificial intelligence

In mid-November, accommodation sharing platform Airbnb acquired GamePlanner.AI, a 12-person artificial intelligence company led by Adam Cheyer and Siamak Hodjat. "What makes GamePlanner.AI so special is that it combines AI, design and community expertise," said Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky. And...

In the spring of 2022, the Lufthansa group ventured outside its core aviation target by attacking meetings & events and business travel reservations. For the first foray, Lufthansa Global Spaces relied on a Hubli partnership. The second was based on Navan, with the launch of BusinessToGo. This platform, which could look...

How would you describe the upturn in business travel? Bertrand Poey - The recovery is good if we look at the overall IATA figures, we are at around 95% compared with 2019. For the French market, the airlines are forecasting that October will see a return to the same period in...

How is Navan doing in the French market? Zahir Abdelouhab - Navan France currently employs around fifty people in Paris. However, we also have customers in the provinces and in Monaco. And we regularly have to travel to meet local needs. What is the profile of your customers, and...

Google Maps has been and remains a real revolution for all travellers - especially business travellers - when it comes to getting from one place to another. Whatever the means of transport used. Admittedly, there are a few glitches, particularly when it comes to walking routes - which are sometimes longer than they need to be. But Google...

By the summer of 2023, CWT will have joined the WhatsApp 'business travel' group. A community that includes the likes of Air France and Amex GBT. That's almost three and a half years after the launch of CWT's messaging service. The famous channel has been added to an offering that already includes the myCWT app,...

Buoyed by the advent of ChatGPT, the flagship of artificial intelligence and its vast range of possibilities, AI is the focus of all attention and investment. Navan promised at the beginning of the year that it would be at the forefront of innovation. On the occasion of its change of identity, and the launch of a virtual assistant called Ava, Navan...

How do you feel about the EVP 2023 barometer published this week by Amex GBT? Yorick Charveriat - I see the positive side, because we can feel that business is picking up again. Admittedly, we are not at 2019 levels, but we can rely on a solid recovery. There are many...

All eyes seem to be on artificial intelligence (AI) this week, for better or worse. While voices are being raised in favour of a more rational pace of development, financial managers are looking favourably on the possibility of entrusting more tasks to this technology. Starting with the management of...

The information had already been leaked a few days ago. We had to wait for it to be made official before we could get a clearer picture of TripActions' intentions. Well, it's now official: the business travel specialist has been renamed Navan. The platform is taking advantage of this rebranding to announce a number of changes to its offering, including the integration of the various...

Motorola ThinkPhone Lenovo ThinkPad aficionados will be delighted to learn that their computer has now been turned into a smartphone in the same vein with the Motorola ThinkPhone (it's from the same company). The same focus on the professional market, with quality and reliability at the top of the agenda, and the same kind of high-end specification, with a...

Faced with rising fares in the business travel sector, players are trying to get organised. This is particularly true in the air travel sector, where significant increases are expected on a number of strategic business travel routes, as illustrated by the recent Air Monitor 2023 report published by Amex GBT. Its competitor has now...

Automating responses to the simplest, most common requests in order to free up human time for more complex enquiries: this has been one of the main challenges facing business travel agencies for several years now. Like other players in the market, American Express GBT is now banking on a virtual assistant...

What are the key points of the Air Transport IT Insights 2021 report published by SITA? Sergio Colella - This report shows that Covid is playing a role in accelerating digitalisation. We see this in our everyday lives, and inevitably in the air transport sector. For almost ten years now, we have been interviewing...

How is the start of 2022 going for TripActions in France? Zahir Abdelouhab - We're just getting started, we're beginning to have interesting initial discussions with customers, the team is in place, we officially opened the offices in January: we're in the thick of things. The official launch was due to take place...

When and why did you launch 100 Bagages? Armelle Feumba - I launched 100 Bagages last year, based on my own personal experience: a baggage incident when my wheelchair didn't arrive at its destination. It was very unpleasant, especially as the service wasn't as good as it could have been. That's what prompted me to...

Zoomtopia, the annual conference organised by Zoom, was held on 13 and 14 September. It was an opportunity for the remote communications specialist to take stock of the past few months, which have obviously been marked by intense activity linked to containment measures around the world. "Over the last decade,...

Where do French companies stand on the road to ecomobility? What are the obstacles slowing down the transition to greener travel? What impact has the crisis had on the commitment of senior executives? These were the main questions addressed by the webinar organised by OpinionWay on Tuesday. The online conference was based...

From one edition to the next, this is undoubtedly one of the great showcases of the VivaTech trade fair, this flurry of futuristic inventions heralding the imminent arrival of flying taxis in the skies over major cities, as well as autonomous cars and soon even... houses in the clouds. Start-up Hover City, for example, has invented 'mobile' real estate. And all at the whim of...

Hyatt was one of the last major hotel groups not to reveal its plans for hybrid meetings. Now it has, with the presentation of its 'Together by Hyatt' series of event packages. The programme has been designed around four themes: technology, of course, but also expertise, the kind that Hyatt can offer organisers...