In this episode: BCD’s Yannis Karmis, senior vice president of Product Planning & Development, connects with our podcast hosts Chad Lemon and Miriam Moscovici to talk about our history with AI and how we’re working to safely and smartly integrate AI into more services that will ultimately improve processes for clients, business travelers and our agents.
Automation and robotics aren’t new to BCD.
We’ve been using this form of AI for several years.
Travel commerce platform
BCD uses AI to build structured information in our hotel platform on room and bed information across rate codes. This provides our agent and traveler platforms with more consistent information on room and bed types, enabling us to optimize our offer for travelers. Traditionally these attributes have been hard to compare across rate codes and suppliers. One technique we use to help train our AI is to engage our agents for input. If they see that our AI has failed to accurately map the room or bed type, any BCD agent can teach our AI right from a hotel display in our agent platform. This hybrid approach to AI allows us to increase the accuracy of attributes in our hotel platform at a quicker pace.
BCD Pay
Our proprietary digital spend management platform uses AI as part of its reconciliation capabilities. The platform allows clients to match credit card statements from multiple banking providers with transaction data. There are many reasons why a transaction reported on a credit card might not match a BCD transaction perfectly, such as a spelling difference in a name or a rate difference due to current conversion timing. BCD Pay uses machine learning to learn these mismatches so they can be more easily reconciled in the future.
Introducing BCD Pay >
Enhanced traveler identity
Our profile management solution is continuing to enhance with a traveler identity layer supported by AI. This allows us to recognize travelers more easily, remember their preferences, and make relevant recommendations.
Predictive analytics
AI drives the predictive and prescriptive insights delivered in our DecisionSource® platform – helping users make confident business decisions with their travel data. For example, the What-If data insights feature helps predict future scenarios by showing how potential policy and behavior-related program changes could improve areas such as air cabin class and online booking adoption. The interactive visualizations allow you to quickly identify opportunities to improve your program, modify policies, and begin to see savings. Our suggested changes are based on historical data, which ensures they are consistent with your travel patterns.
Air Price Assurance
Price assurance technology leverages AI to map traffic and shopping patterns to find the best prices and match like for likes on rebooking.
What’s next?
Looking ahead, BCD will explore opportunities to use AI in service and support solutions. How can AI positively impact the traveler experience in terms of chat robotics and email automation? It’s still very early days, but the promise is evident.
Eager for more AI insights? Check out Yannis Karmis’ interview at the GBTA Broadcast Studio during the 2023 Global Business Travel Association Convention in Dallas, Texas.
