Travel management company and technology platform Itilite has launched a new AI travel analyst tool for clients' travel data, the company announced.
The tool, Iris, builds on Itilite's Mastermind data analytics tool, which can benchmark T&E data and provide instructions on how companies can achieve savings and meet travel program goals, Itilite founder and CEO Mayank Kukreja said. With Iris, companies can make inquiries about their data using natural language in a "ChatGPT-like interface," he said. Responses can come in the form of text or also in more visual forms, such as charts or reports, and the responses can be downloaded, he said.
Itilite has been running Iris internally with its account managers over the past six months prior to its rollout today. The most common use cases so far have been to audit programs for leakage—finding out how many hotels were booked outside negotiated rates in a certain city, for example—or for one-off situations such as an arrival roster to arrange transportation during a company event, Kukreja said.
Responses from Iris generally take a little time to be generated, as instantaneous responses increase the likelihood of hallucinations, he said.
"It's a conscious design call," Kukreja said. "Correctness of data takes about 10 or 15 seconds to answer."
Itilite is working on making Iris available at the individual traveler level in the future, he added. For example, a traveler who is traveling with a team could use the tool to spot on a map where those colleagues are staying to help their own trip planning.