Guest travel and expense platform Juno is launching new meetings management capabilities for guest travelers and has added Direct Travel as its latest travel management company partner, the company announced.
Juno's Guest Meetings capabilities were developed in partnership with the platform's customers to "sit at the intersection of two of the gnarliest workflows in corporate travel," Juno co-founder and CEO Devon Tivona said. The company launched earlier this year to provide automation for the largely manual process of booking and managing non-employee travel, but meetings for those travelers adds an extra layer of largely manual complexity, he said.
The capabilities include a meeting dashboard where users can see full details about guests, including flight information and ground transportation, with the capability to invite guests in bulk and monitor when they have booked and are on the road with updates provided on flight status and disruptions. Users also can upload room blocks, and the platform uses AI to keep it in sync with information about confirmations, name changes and late arrivals.
Specific use cases Juno has identified with its customers include tech companies that onboard 50 to 70 new hires at the same time, which could be managed as a guest workflow, or investigator and opinion-leader meetings in the health care space that "involve high-value travelers coming in for a meeting or event," Tivona said. Sports and media events also are a use case, with a "massive number of guest travelers that travel for those," he said.
Some Juno customers already are using the Guest Meetings capabilities, and the company is rolling it out to a broader group of users this quarter, Tivona said. It's able to manage events as small as five attendees and as large as 500 or more, he said.
In addition, the company on Tuesday announced a reselling agreement with Direct Travel, making its capabilities available to Direct Travel clients. This marks Juno's third TMC reselling agreement, in addition to those with Altour and World Travel, Inc., already announced. Steve Singh's Madrona Ventures, which is among the group of the Singh-led group of investors that acquired Direct Travel last year, also is among Juno's investors.
"Guest travel has long been a headache for corporate travel managers, and by teaming up with Juno, we're changing this complex process for the better," Direct Travel CEO Christal Bemont said in a statement. "This partnership is an example of how we're continuously innovating Avenir by layering in technologies that move us closer to realizing the vision of the perfect trip."
Direct Travel and Juno will begin rolling out the partnership to clients in the first quarter of 2026, the companies said.
Tivona said Juno plans to continue to expand TMC partnerships, with another three expected by the end of this year and a goal of doubling to 12 total in 2026. "We've probably dedicated 30 percent of our roadmap and engineering resources to TMC integration," Tivona said. "This is a huge area of investment for us."