INSIGHT
Can Generative AI help refine corporate travel policies?
With the right prompts and goals, absolutely. Here’s how.
Generative AI isn’t just changing how we conduct research, discover new recipes, or understand the latest online meme. It’s a multifaceted tool poised to assist professionals across a wide range of industries, not surprisingly including business travel.
There are questions surrounding how generative AI and large language models can support corporate travel programs. Most specifically, Gen AI can be invaluable when it's time to revise and refine your travel policy to be more responsive to industry changes, efficient in the face of evolving costs and needs, and personalized for travelers.
If you’re unsure where to start, we've curated some beginner strategies from our AI experts. Ready, set, prompt!
Crafting persona-based & industry-specific travel policies
As much as we’d like them to be, travel policies aren’t one-size-fits-all. Travel managers and policy professionals can turn to Gen AI to help create more personalized policies based on travelers’ unique profiles and industry requirements.
For example, if you work in the healthcare industry, you could ask Gen AI to assist you in reviewing your policy for US HIPAA or EU GDPR-compliant language. Gen AI can also help you conduct gap analyses against travel policies in your industry, and help review policies from a cultural lens – will your policy make sense in all your key markets? Will your expense requirements work in Australia and Brazil?
Also, we know travel policies can be lengthy. Gen AI can help you craft convenient one-page summaries of your policy to share with travelers and stakeholders, giving them a succinct overview before delving into the entire document.
Scenario-Specific Optimization
The unpredictability of macroeconomic factors, both regionally and globally, poses challenges when crafting and updating travel policies. It may feel difficult to keep up.
While Gen AI can’t see into the future, it can help you prepare for future scenarios based on past data with scenario optimization, ensuring that policies are adjusted in response to current market conditions. For example, travel managers can review market strengths and weaknesses and make policy adjustments swiftly.
Streamlining data-driven decision making
With Gen AI in the picture, the traditional ways of updating and maintaining budgets are now outdated. But now, thanks to Gen AI's ability to analyze past trends, travel managers can establish policy benchmarks efficiently and with greater confidence. For example, by examining data from the past six months to identify trends, areas of opportunity, or areas of risk, travel managers can redefine policies based on concrete insights, allowing them to navigate the ebbs and flows of corporate budgeting with ease instead of the unknown.
But wait! There are essential things to consider before refining your policy with Gen AI.
You need to make sure you’re using your AI powers for good. You can’t blindly trust Gen AI’s output – while it can speed up the process considerably and shed light on details you might usually miss – human review is essential for anything that is generated or analyzed by Gen AI.
Meticulous line reviews are crucial in preventing unintended discrimination, policy bias, or unclear language. For example, AI can inadvertently prioritize cost over accessibility, posing potential fairness issues, like convincing everyone to switch to economy seats just because it’s more affordable. Travel managers should continually run these new policies past human eyes, from stakeholders to even a focus group of travelers.
But the biggest concern? Data privacy. Many companies are investing in enterprise Gen AI licences and environments that “fence in” their data and protect personally identifiable information (PII). You shouldn’t use public LLM chats or sites to refine, write, or analyze internal policy information and data. Make sure to talk to your data privacy team to make certain you’re protecting your company’s and travelers’ data.
Generative AI is a travel manager’s essential sidekick
Leveraging relevant and effective AI solutions can help streamline operations and ensure corporate travel policies are tailored to the needs of individual employees and the company’s goals. You just need to know what you want to refine in your travel policy, ensure your data privacy is in order, and then prompt Gen AI accurately.