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Out-of-policy hotel bookings have long been a source of frustration for corporate travel managers and travel management companies. AI and machine learning technologies can help address the issue by presenting business travelers with hotel options that match their personal preferences.

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Personalized recommendations powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can improve the experience of business travelers at every stage of their travel journey. These features are especially advantageous in the hotel space, which is plagued by non-compliant bookings.

Irrelevant content and outdated tools have often frustrated business travelers booking lodging for their trips, leading travelers to book outside company policy. Despite the technologies available, it’s rare for corporate travel tools to present business travelers with relevant hotel choices. Additionally, today’s business travelers are quick to use the tools that suit their individual needs, as their expectations are increasingly influenced by platforms they use in their personal lives. Unfortunately, many of the corporate travel tools out there don’t offer the conveniences and flexibilities that modern business travelers now expect.

This may be why only 15 percent of business travelers who booked their last business trip added a hotel through their company’s online booking tool, according to a survey from the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).

The good news is that most business travelers are willing to share personal information with vendors to receive a more personalized travel experience, according to another GBTA study. By using artificial intelligence and machine learning to collect data to track personal preferences and travel histories, build individual user profiles, and make smart recommendations—and therefore, present travelers with options that make sense for them—travel management companies and corporations can encourage bookings within their program.

Adelman Travel, a travel services provider specializing in corporate travel and expense management, sees the value of offering customers accommodation offerings that match their personal preferences. “Adding personalization features and sentiment across millions of data points fuels a level of customization we’ve been working toward for a long time,” said Ivan Imana, Chief Information Officer at Adelman. “We expect these innovations to boost our hotel attachment rates by up to five percent.”

Better, more relevant content powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning doesn’t just improve the travel experience for the business traveler—it helps all parties involved in the managed travel process. This leads to a faster, more convenient booking experience for the traveler, more control for the travel manager, increased efficiency for travel management companies, and the ability for the supplier to present their content to the most likely buyers, and thus generate more revenue.

Deem, a leading mobile and cloud technology provider for the business travel industry, is one such company that utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to better understand business traveler preferences. Deem’s Intelligent Attach platform predicts preferred hotels for travelers based on search history, traveler behavior, corporate and agency preferences, and real-time sentiment data points extracted from millions of traveler reviews across hundreds of thousands of hotels.

“Intelligent Attach addresses two critical aspects of the recommendation process: finding the correct hotel and explaining to the traveler why this is the correct hotel for them,” said Gadi Bashvitz, Vice President and Group Lead at Deem. “It knows if a hotel meets the traveler’s chain preference, is within the corporate policy, is quiet or has a gym with TVs and whether the Wifi works well or not—and it can display this information to the traveler. It’s that knowledge, paired with traveler behavior that allows the technology to learn over time.”

Intelligent Attach is available as part of Deem Work Fource, a software suite for booking and managing corporate travel that provides unique solutions for travelers, corporate travel managers, travel management companies and suppliers. To learn more about how Deem Work Fource and Intelligent Attach can improve personalization within your corporate travel business, visit Deem’s offerings at https://www.deem.com.

This content was created collaboratively by Deem and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.

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Tags: booking, corporate travel, deem, hotel

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