- Key insight: Amex GBT has added agentic AI tools to its corporate-travel management system.
- What's at stake: Payment companies and banks are seeking uses for advanced forms of AI, with travel requiring complex management that could be amenable to automation.
- Expert quote: "Agentic AI is really not that far off from calling someone to do this for you," –John Sturino, an executive vice president at Amex GBT
With
"A travel agent is an 'agent' that people remember, so agentic AI is really not that far off from calling someone to do this for you," John Sturino, an executive vice president at Amex GBT, told American Banker.
American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) has launched the Egencia AI connector in Anthropic's Claude, part of an effort to replicate human travel assistants with agentic AI. (Amex GPT is separate from American Express, following a 2022 spin-off, and is in the process of being acquired by
By applying large language models to business travel, Amex GPT is selling into a large addressable market – about 1.3 million Americans travel for business every day, and global corporate travel spending totaled
With payment companies selling AI to consumer and corporate users, Amex GPT is pushing a niche use – its clients include Citi, Synovus and dozens of other financial institutions, businesses and government agencies that all need to manage staff travel expenses.
"The goal is to give everyone an agent in their pocket," Sturino said.
Bot booking
Egencia AI connector is the first deployment for Amex GBT's agent-to-agent architecture, an AI layer that integrates travel management inside AI environments. That means travelers and AI agents can search, book and manage air and hotel travel. For example, a traveler can ask Claude to look at their calendar for the next month. The AI agent then provides possible itineraries for upcoming activities with help booking the trip within corporate policy. Amex GPT is also pilot testing a travel assistant for the AI engineer Neo that enables business travelers and traveler arrangers to search, book and manage trips inside Microsoft Teams.
Amex GBT backed the release with research from Forrester, noting that while 90% of corporate executives are happy with their company's travel technology, only 3% say their travel technology is fully integrated into the rest of their organization's workflow. And only 24% of business travelers say their experience is seamless and low effort. Eighty-two percent of business travelers believe AI could simplify their lives and 79% trust AI assistance, according to Forrester.
"The travel system is very opaque and is constantly changing, so having an AI agent working for you can be helpful," Sturino said.
An easy trip
Business travel is amenable to agentic commerce because of a mix of complexity and compliance offset by trips that follow specific parameters that are easy for AI tools to vet, according to payment experts.
Business travel is subject to documented rules that override individual preferences, and is governed by contracts and preferred vendor relationships, according to Christopher Miller, lead analyst for emerging payments at Javelin Strategy & Research.
"It is funneled more or less through sole preferred payment mechanisms which make the data more reliable in predicting future needs," Miller said.
Business travel is a good use case for agentic commerce as it can leverage clear business-set rules such as travel times, budget, type of accommodation, type of transport, economy vs. business, user type/seniority, preapproved travel provider partners and authorized budgets linked to business needs/revenue outcomes, according to Gilles Ubaghs, executive advisor at Datos Insights.
"There is significantly less uncertainty in the purchase process vs. consumer travel purchase decisions, and a clear benefit of efficiency," Ubaghs told American Banker. The lure of reducing expense and other overhead from corporate travel is attractive to businesses, Ubaghs said.
"Traditional corporate travel programs have long been pretty messy," Ubaghs said. "Travelers increasingly expect to be able to self-service and book on their own rather than go through a traditional travel agent where control and visibility is limited, but this remains a difficult proposition."
A lot of user portals for corporate travel exist but tend to produce bad experiences where corporates end up having to battle with shadow travel budgets and their own workflows, according to Ubaghs. "AI is essentially a means to automate that human travel agent component while maintaining efficiency and corporate travel policy rules. This will undoubtedly lead to job losses in the corporate travel sector eventually."
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But while AI agents are getting better at shopping enablement and things like building shopping carts, fully automated machine-to-machine payments remain some ways off, according to Ubaghs. "Part of it is that the liability infrastructure is still being built out. There's also just a human trust factor of most users will want at least a final approve button for the human in the loop."
And contrary to previous technology cycles such as mobile or social media, where consumer use comes early and influences business use, many workers might first experience agentic commerce through travel planning and other purchase types at work, shaping their expectations about what is possible, according to Miller. "In that sense, companies that participate in this space right now are gaining valuable insight into the benefits and pitfalls, and this may position them to serve as leaders in delivering consumer facing products in the future," Miller said.
