Corporate travel AI automation platform Amgine is integrating
into Cvent an automated group air booking tool for travel management companies.
With the integration, Amgine's APIs pull data from a meeting
registration form and automatically deliver a trip proposal to the traveling
attendee, including flight options and seat maps, within minutes of the
request, according to the companies. Travelers can then self-select their
preferred option, which will align with corporate travel policies.
TMCs can also have Amgine route the itinerary choices to an
agent for review before sending them to the traveler if they prefer.
The workflow replaces a usual manual process in which
traveler registrations are exported at specific intervals to an Excel
spreadsheet, from which an agent creates PNRs and itineraries for each
individual traveler. That can take an experienced travel agent five minutes per group
traveler, Amgine CEO Greg Apple told BTN. "An average agent needs eight minutes." And because they will want to wait until there's a critical mass of registrants to export their lists in a manual workflow, registered attendees can wait days, possibly weeks, to get their itineraries. "That's not a good experience," said Apple.
As a result, group air request processing is "one of the most
repeated requests we receive" from TMC clients, Apple said. "We know how tedious it can be for corporate agents to
sift through hundreds or thousands of rows of a spreadsheet for just one
event." He said post-pandemic staffing issues drove a number of TMCs to the product.
In terms of payment and ticketing, profiled
travelers are still the easiest to handle through the Amgine-Cvent workflow.
Non-profiled travelers get trickier due to payment, which can’t just be entered
into the Amgine tool.
“That's a point of contention for us because
it's PCI compliance,” said director of implementation and training Bryan
Fernandez. In those cases, however, the TMC or traveler can proceed with the
booking, but it won’t be ticketed until the TMC receives payment. The corporate client can specify to the agency how to handle such bookings, either charging to a central bill or, at worse, requesting a form of payment from the attendee.
In terms of reporting on those meetings itineraries and
travel spend, the data flows to the TMC and also to Cvent. It is associated
with a meeting or event code, according to Apple, which allows the host organization
to tie the spend picture to the individual event.
Cvent will make the Amgine app and the integration for group
air bookings available for download by TMCs in its app marketplace this month.
TMCs will have to sign up to be an Amgine partner in order to use the
automation. Apple told BTN that the company already partners with some big TMC but
couldn’t name them. He did specify a number of BCD affiliates, however, Atlas
Travel, Christopherson Business Travel and Travel Inc. Apple also hinted at
more innovations to come over the summer.
“I'll tell you more in July. I'm under wraps because we're
in partnership with Travel Inc. on this, but they're a very innovative TMC and
they're giving us all these use cases to solve.” Apple said the company was also working on a project with Bizly.
The Amgine platform is among a number of products attempting the fill the group travel gap. Others include AmTrav Gather, Groupize and Spotnana Events.
– Elizabeth West contributed to this report